Assessing filtered permeability around the globe: The unknown beloved principle of cycling cities

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2021.102964Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Freedom of movement 44% greater for a cyclist than a motorist in Europe.

  • Filtered permeability (FP) three times higher in Europe than elsewhere in the world.

  • FP four times lower in the USA than in Europe.

  • FP is a new and effective approach to sustainable urban transport planning.

Abstract

Cycling cities have one point in common: they are characterized by high levels of “filtered permeability” (FP), a principle that still isn’t widely known or studied. In these cities, a cyclist’s freedom of movement is considerably greater than a motorist’s. The objective of this article is to highlight and operationalize this principle for the first time. For this purpose, a FP index has been developed and calculated in 60 cities throughout the world. The results demonstrate that the freedom of movement of a cyclist in a European city is on average 44% greater than a motorist’s, which is a FP level about three times greater than what was measured in the other geographic areas studied (South and Central America, North America, Asia and Oceania). As other well-known factors (e.g. safety, accessibility, traffic calming measures), FP could be an effective dimension to create a conducive urban environment for cycling and thus, promote more sustainable mobility behaviours.

Introduction

The use of transport systems is not sustainable in most cities, which requires major changes in our policies and practices (Arsenio et al., 2016, Black, 2010, Schwanen et al., 2011). Sustainability issues namely affect the ever-growing consumption of energy and resources to support mobility in urban zones (Gilbert and Perl, 2010, Zawieska and Pieriegud, 2018). These issues are also represented in high levels of noise and air pollution, crashes and congestion caused by motorized transport (Gössling, 2016, Stanley et al., 2011). Within this context, initiatives targeting more sustainable urban mobility have multiplied over the last years (Holden et al., 2019). Among these initiatives, several transport policies have the objective of stimulating a modal shift from car use towards active modes (Babalik-Sutcliffe, 2013). In fact, it is now widely acknowledged that active modes have a major role to play in sustainable mobility (Pucher and Buehler, 2012), whereas motorized transport is often considered as a major cause of sustainability issues (Banister, 2005). To promote this modal shift, major efforts must be made to “rebalance” the effectiveness of these modes by developing urban environments that encourage cycling and walking and discourage car use (Aldred and Croft, 2019, Banister, 2008). In combination with environmental elements, some European cities have achieved this through planning transport networks characterized by a high level of “filtered permeability” (Melia, 2015). In these cities, a person's freedom of movement is significantly increased if he or she travels by active modes rather than by car (Melia, 2008). In fact, the network available to cyclists and pedestrians is denser, more widespread and better connected, which has the effect of “filtering out” cars. This makes a route more direct by bicycle or on foot, which tends to favour their use.

Very few studies have examined the principle of filtered permeability and none of them have attempted to operationalize it yet. In fact, most of the few studies existing on the subject are based on observations and not on quantitative analyses (Melia, 2012). This article targets a methodological contribution by suggesting the first filtered permeability index. This index was applied to 60 cities to analyze its variability throughout the world. To our knowledge, it is the first large-scale study conducted on the theme of filtered permeability.

Section snippets

Filtered permeability: definition and criticism

The term “filtered permeability” (FP) was proposed by Steve Melia (2008) and officially used for the first time in 2008 in the British government’s guidelines for their ecological cities program (TCPA, 2008). It was also endorsed the same year in the Take Action on Active Travel declaration signed by 106 organizations – almost entirely British – concerned by public health and transport planning (Sustrans, 2008). Since then, it has been progressively integrating the transport planning lexicon

Research objectives

The concept of FP remains sparsely mobilized in the field of active-transport planning even though it has been shown to promote cycling and helps to achieve sustainable mobility objectives. Moreover, although the factors favouring FP are known, no study to date has proposed to operationalize it. To fill this gap, an index was set up – based on the three dimensions characterizing a network (configuration, density and connectivity) – to quantify the FP level on a territory. In a scoping-out

Selected cities

Sixty cities throughout the world were selected based on four criteria (Table 3). First of all, we retained six European cities identified with a high FP level according to Melia, 2015, Foletta, 2011: Fribourg, Groningue, Houten, Malmö, Maastricht and Münster. Secondly, this number being somewhat limited (6), we added the 20 cities from the 2019 rankings of the well-known Copenhagenize Index (Copenhagenize Design Company, 2019), thereby identifying the most bicycle-friendly cities around the

Ranking of cities according to the filtered permeability index and regional analyses

The results of the average FP index weighted by the ambient population (named FPw) for the 60 cities are present in Table 5 and Fig. 1. Note that the index was also calculated with the weighted median (not presented here for parsimony’s sake) with very similar results that only slightly affect the cities’ rankings.

As illustrated in Table 5 and in Fig. 1, the results vary significantly according to the five world regions (Anova: F(4,55) = 20.87, p < 0.001, Eta2 = 0.603). More specifically, the

Limits of the study

The main limits of the study are relative to the use of OSM data, the selection of cities and the construction of the FP index. Firstly, we couldn’t retain African cities (due to incomplete OSM data) or Russian cities (due to differences in the calculation of routes). Secondly, like all selections of cities, it is questionable: it could have been based on different criteria and applied to a larger sample size. Moreover, differences between the selected cities in terms of urban environment,

Conclusion

The main objective of the paper was to shed light on and operationalize for the first time the concept of filtered permeability (FP), an approach to transportation planning aimed at encouraging cycling. A FP index was constructed in order to compare the freedom of movement (permeability) offered by the network accessible by bicycle and that by car. It is based on the three dimensions that characterize a network: configuration, density and connectivity. To analyze the variability of the level of

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This study was financially supported by the Canada Research Chair in Environmental Equity (950-230813) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (435-2019-0796).

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