Understanding the links between cyclists' behavior and cyclability in French Cities: A mobile method with real time discourse

Résumé En

Since the 80s in France several urban policies have emerged targeting a shift from car to other transport modes. Despite new infrastructures and communication campaigns, the results of such policies still remain lower than expected [Kaufmann, 2000 ; Buhler, 2015]. For most of French cities, bicycle modal share remains under 3%. My PhD work focuses on the reasons of this.A consistent literature suggests institutional, technical and economical reasons, but in our knowledge there are few research works about bicycle usage from the cyclist's point of view. The hypothesis we tackle here concerns the “cycling-ability” that makes a person cycle or not. In an urban environment, a cyclist needs to deal with a lot of different parameters: position on the road, route, balance, speed, other users' moves... Dealing with these factors at the same time needs to have an important part of them internalized, a psychological process that transfer them into automatic reflexes. To study “cycling-ability”, that is to say the way urban cyclists deal with all these parameters at the same time, we developed a mobile method consisting in following volunteer cyclists in real time conditions letting them comment their ride. This method, partially based on similar works [Meissonnier, 2012], consists in two parts:– First we ask the user to cycle on a well-known route for him.– Then we ask him to cycle to another place we choose.In both parts, we follow him with an embedded camera, in order to record his behavior and his comments. This method lets the user describe his experience in real time, without the need of questions, so it limits the risk of influencing his discourse. It gives the opportunity to see his behavior in his environment, without any filter. Then this method allows to carry out other research projects: comparisons among different people cycling through the same place, or between the same person's behavior in different places, or among different kinds of users, etc.The presentation will be first about the aims of the experience, then the method in itself will be described, and finally we will see the first results.