Organizer: Robin Lovelace. Robin is the Lead Developer of the Propensity to Cycle Tool, an open source, online system for cycle-orientated planning. He will bring a technical perspective to the debate, with a focus on the practicalities of how to create open source software underlying online tools.

Chair: John Parkin John has a long career as a transport planner and cycling researcher. He has pioneered methods for assessing cycling potential and has written influential guidance on cycling, and will bring transport engineering expertise to the table. Panel participants:

Randy Rzewnicki. Randy works for the European Cycling Federation and has years of experience of seeing the implementation of national cycling plans. Randy will bring an international perspective to the talks and insight into how the tools can be used in practice.

Ricardo Marques. Ricardo is an experienced cycling advocate and academic, with an engineering background. As such, he will help bridge the gap between academic research and cycling advocacy. Ricardo will help answer the question: how can such tools be used by local campaign groups?

James Woodcock James lead a program on Public Health Modelling at the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), University of Cambridge. He is PI on the PCT and has led the development of the Integrated Transport and Health Impact Modelling tool (ITHIM). He has recently received funding for two new projects, TIGTHAT and METAHIT. He is one of the core expert group of the WHO HEAT tool.

Joost de Kruijff Joost de Kruijff joined the department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Science as a PhD student in November 2014. He has received his BSc degree in Mathematics from Utrecht University in September 2012 and his MSc degree in Industrial and Applied Mathematics from Eindhoven University of Technology in September 2014. Under supervision of Ton de Kok and Cor Hurkens and funded by ASML, he conducts research on deterministic models for the Supply Chain Operation Planning problem.

Topic of interest

For investment in cycling infrastructure to be effective, it must be built where it is needed. A dual direction 1.5 m shared use path is inappropriate along a route that has the potential to be used by over 5000 cycles per hour at its peak, for example. Likewise, a dedicated one way cycle path 3 m wide built along a desire line with a maximum potential of less than 500 cycles per hour at its peak may not represent the most cost effective expenditure of money and natural resources per unit of cycling uptake (e.g. measured in $/pkm cycled). This problem has been tackled to some extent by the Propensity to Cycle Tool (go to www.pct.bike to test it out). The PCT has been created using by an academic team funded by the UK’s Department for Transport (DfT), and has received praise from transport planning professionals, academics, and industry alike. But what is the potential for the method and interactive toolkit to scale internationally? How can the tool be improved? It is the purpose of this Panel Session to discuss the opportunities, barriers and ways forward to allow the PCT to be deployed in other countries. As indicated in the session title, it would ultimately be possible for online tools for assessing the geographical distribution of cycling potential to scale worldwide. After an appraisal of national experience of tools for assessing cycling potential, is envisioned that discussion will shift towards how such system, based on open source code, open data from OpenStreetMap (OSM) and ‘open government’ initiatives and an international research community, could help provide a toolkit for evidence based planning for cycling worldwide.

Keywords: cycling potential, modal shift, infrastructure evaluation

How the panel session will be organised

The panel session will be organized in 2 parts, the first will provide a 5 minute overview of the PCT followed by comments from panel members and questions from the audience. The latter will be 20 minutes, which will provide time (up to 2 minutes) for panelist statements and then discussion with the audience.

  1. What is the Propensity to Cycle Tool and how could it scale globally? This will focus on clarifying what the tool is, how it can be used and its potential to help plan for cycling in settlements and countries worldwide (5 minute presentation by Robin). It will touch on how the PCT differs existing tools such as Bikeprint for strategic cycle planning and its strengths, limitations and future potential.

Panelists will be invited to comment on how this relates to tools they have used.

  1. What is needed? This section will identify is missing from the current suite of tools for strategic cycle planning, and set out a ‘wishlist’ of tool features that participants and attendees most want to see and How to move forward?

In it we will focus on the follow issues:

Each session will be time limited and will provide an opportunity for the audience to input points of information, suggested actions or questions. The expected outcomes from the panel session will be: