Sidewalk‐based bicycle path network design incorporating equity in cycling time

Many cities find it difficult to claim enough land to build dedicated bicycle lanes. In response, this study proposes a novel framework to design a bicycle path network based on the existing sidewalks where selected sidewalk links are converted into eligible bicycle paths. The output will be a subset of the sidewalk links chosen to be converted to eligible bicycle paths with minimum cost such that all origin–destination (O‐D) pairs are connected with bicycle paths and cyclists from each O‐D pair can enjoy similar degrees of equity. The equity defined here is that cyclists from each O‐D pair will not need to travel excessively longer in time in the designed bicycle path network than in the original sidewalk network. A novel decomposition‐based dynamic dimensional search is proposed to solve the problem. The numerical experiments of a university campus and Clementi town in Singapore have shown our algorithm with varying equity parameter choices can provide tangible inclusive bicycle path network designs and improve as many as 80% equity in certain O‐D pairs with critical inequity issues.