Enhancing urban sustainability: Addressing geographical barriers to promote bicycle travel

The scarcity of convenient bicycle lanes that transcend geographical barriers hinders the establishment of a seamless and comprehensive bicycle network within urban areas, consequently reducing people's willingness to use bicycles for transportation and posing a significant challenge to promoting sustainable development in urban transportation in China. A method is proposed to identify geographical barriers that impede bicycle travel. By focusing on the area within Beijing's Fifth Ring Road as a case study, the study leverages mobile signaling and shared bicycle data to extract potential bicycle travel patterns. Community detection algorithm is employed to divide the area into zones and identify travel boundaries. A total of 24 travel boundaries were identified, with 11 of them deemed as high-priority geographical barriers. The potential carbon emissions reduction was quantified and recommendations for infrastructure enhancement were provided. This method offers a cost-effective and efficient means to analyze weaknesses in bicycle infrastructure. The findings of this research can contribute to the enhancement of urban bicycle networks and facilitate the sustainable development of urban transportation.