Is the London Cycle Hire Scheme becoming more inclusive? An evaluation of the shifting spatial distribution of uptake based on 70 million trips
| Autor: | Antonia Roberts, Roger Beecham, Chris Slade, Robin Lovelace, Yuanxuan Yang, Eva Heinen, Eugeni Vidal Tortosa |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
050210 logistics & transportation
Official statistics Inequality business.industry media_common.quotation_subject 05 social sciences Big data 0211 other engineering and technologies Psychological intervention Transportation 02 engineering and technology Management Science and Operations Research Geography Framing (social sciences) 0502 economics and business TRIPS architecture Demographic economics 021108 energy Location business Cycling Civil and Structural Engineering media_common |
| ISSN: | 0965-8564 |
| Popis: | Pro-cycling interventions, and cycle hire schemes in particular, are often assumed to primarily benefit the privileged. This framing has played-out in academic research, with many papers exploring the relationship between cycling and existing inequalities. A growing body of evidence suggests that cycle hire schemes tend to serve wealthy areas and young, high income groups, mirroring inequalities in other types of cycling uptake, yet there has been little research into the ‘direction of travel’ and whether such inequalities are growing or ‘levelling up’ over time. This paper explores the uptake of the London Cycle Hire Scheme (LCHS), a large, early and prominent scheme that had the explicit aim of ‘normalising’ cycling. The method involved reproducible analysis (with code documented in the GitHub repo Robinlovelace/cycle-hire-inclusive) of 73.4 million cycle high records spanning 8 years from January 2012 to December 2019, using the geographic location of docking stations alongside official statistics to assess social and spatial inequalities in uptake. The method involved analysis of 73.4 million cycle high records spanning 8 years from January 2012 to December 2019, using the geographic location of docking stations alongside official statistics to assess social and spatial inequalities in uptake. We found that, contrary to the trend for increasing segregation and geographic inequalities, the usage of the LCHS have become increasingly geographically distributed across London over time, with AM peak usage in comparatively low-income areas seeing high levels of growth. Our study shows that cycle hire schemes can be designed and expanded in ways that benefit a wide range of people, including those from low income areas, and that new cycle hire docking stations in poorer areas can succeed. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|
Full Text from ScienceDirect