Designing an E-Bike City: An automated process for network-wide multimodal road space reallocation

Effective and timely decarbonization of urban mobility requires systemic changes to transportation systems. High-quality cycling networks are seen as one of such measures and multiple scholars have developed automated approaches for a quick generation of such interventions. However, a common shortcoming is that they mostly ignore the tradeoffs and dependencies in allocating scarce road space to different modes. In this paper, we introduce an automated process for generating alternative multimodal transport networks within the boundaries of existing road space. Based on the user’s configuration, the resulting networks can prioritize separated cycling infrastructure, dedicated lanes for public transport, or a dense provision of on-street parking spaces. Also, the prioritization and the resulting designs can follow a variety of design principles, such as one-way streets, or impermeable superblocks. The outputs can be visualized on a map and used in common transport simulation toolkits. A case study in Zurich is used to demonstrate the process on a real-world network and discuss the results. The underlying software package SNMan (Street Network Manipulator) is available as open-source software and can be utilized by researchers and planners to envision alternative urban mobility futures in any place in the world.