Effects of road greenery and sky openness on non-commuting cycling route choice: insights from online map navigation

This study estimates how road greenery and sky openness affect the route choices of non-commuting cyclists with flexible origins and destinations. Although this is critical for understanding the interaction between cyclists' behavior and the environment, and for informing the development of cycling-friendly cities, it has not been sufficiently investigated. Incorporating a cycling route generation toolkit provided by online map navigation, this study generated a set of path alternatives for each ride during non-commuting hours recorded by a massive dockless shared bike datasets in Longgang district, Shenzhen. The average path-level greenery attributes indicated by the tree view factor (TVF) and sky openness (or road enclosure) attributes indicated by the sky view factor (SVF) were measured using street-view image collection and processing methods. The logit models show the positive effects of the availability of bicycle lanes and greenery effects on encouraging the selection of those routes. The roads with a larger SVF have a lower likelihood to be selected, and the reduction effects of larger SVF are mediated by the road width. This study demonstrated the feasibility of integrating multiple state-of-the-art techniques to examine the interaction between landscape elements and cycling behaviours. The findings shed light on building and greening bicycle lanes for pursuing environmentally sustainable bike-friendly cities.