Cycling on public roads

• Main Author: Chung, Yue Sien.
• Other Authors: Wong Yiik Diew
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Civil engineering::Transportation
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/40215
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

As cycling gets increasingly popular in Singapore, more people can be seen cycling for recreational purposes or for short trips. In terms of environmental friendliness, cycling is strongly encouraged as it helps to reduce the pollution from the motorised vehicles into the air. However, due to the scarcity of land in Singapore, not much infrastructure is built for cycling purposes, thus cyclists have to share both the footpaths with the pedestrians and roads with the motorists leading to many safety problems arising from the sharing of space with pedestrians and motorists. In this project, studies were conducted to investigate general cyclists’ behaviour, the speed differentials between cyclists and pedestrians and between cyclists and motorists and available capacity for bicycle on both footpaths and roads. Links in 632 Yishun Street 61 and Jurong West Central 3 were chosen as the study sites where video footages were used to capture the observations. It was found that most of the cyclists were more comfortable cycling on the footpaths as compared to the roads by observing the general cyclist’s behaviour. Judging from the speed differential between cyclists and pedestrians, it was found that cyclists do not pose much of a threat to the pedestrians’ safety as both their speeds were relatively similar with each other thus chances of accidents arising from their conflicts are small. It was also found that the available capacity for bicycle traffic is more on the footpaths as compared to the roads. A perception survey was carried out among the 3 different users namely the pedestrians, cyclists and the motorists to find out their perception towards the various cycling safety issues faced in Singapore. It was found that most of the cyclists are in the favour of cycling on the footpaths and cyclists on the footpaths do not pose much of a threat to the pedestrians. In addition, most motorists also perceived that cyclists are not safe on the roads as most cyclists are inexperienced. The safety issue regarding bicycle movements on links is dynamic in nature where more factors should be taken into consideration. More research should be done in this area.