Evaluation of large-scale cycling environment by using the trajectory data of dockless shared bicycles: A data-driven approach

Abstract

Cycling is increasingly promoted worldwide, but many urban areas lack satisfactory cycling environments. Assessing these environments is crucial, but existing methods face data challenges for large urban networks. This study proposes a data-driven framework using dockless shared bicycle data to efficiently evaluate large-scale cycling environments. First, critical cycling behaviour features that reflect cyclists’ perceptions are identified applying the fuzzy C-means and random forest model. Then, a distribution-oriented evaluation method is developed, ensuring the incorporation of cyclist heterogeneity and quantifying the quality differences among road segments by combining statistical analysis with a hierarchical clustering model. The evaluation framework is applied to Yangpu District, Shanghai, using Mobike data covering 114.9 km of cycling roads. Results show that indicators related to speed magnitude and fluctuation are critical, and an experimental study validates the effectiveness of the data-driven feature extraction method. A minimum trajectory sample size of 260 is required to account for cyclist heterogeneity for one road segment to be evaluated. Further analysis of lower-performing segments identifies vehicle-bicycle separation, on-street parking, and traffic volume as key influencing factors. The rationality of these findings further supports the reliability of the evaluation framework.