Quantifying perceived social benefit of bicycle-friendly infrastructure in Indian cities: Patna as a case study

The Indian central government has been trying to promote the use of bicycles in the Indian cities acknowledging its potential as a sustainable mode of transport. At the urban administrative level, however, there seems to be skepticism in accepting bicycle infrastructure development as an objective to be invested in. To overcome this, the urban local bodies need to be informed of the perceived social benefits of bicycle infrastructure as a rationale for investing in it. This study identifies the commuters’ idea of favourable cycling conditions through a discrete choice experiment conducted in Patna. Different sets of choice alternatives based on different levels of the six identified factors are presented to the commuters using a Stated Preference survey, and their choice data is collected. Using the Multinomial Logit Model, the coefficients and the willingness-to-pay (WTP) values for different levels of factors are determined. The WTP values depict the quantified perceived social benefit of bicycle-infrastructure development in Patna. Findings from the present study show that a reduction in Trip Length has the highest WTP, followed by better route visibility, segregation from motorized vehicles, improvement in road surface quality, and integration with Public Transport.