Selecting Bicycle Commuting Routes Using GIS

This study develops a procedure for using a geographic information system (GIS) to select bicycle routes in a city. The procedure includes: developing the required database, finding the most desirable route between each origin­ destination pair, and identifying the best bicycle routes in a city. The study shows that GIS is a powerful tool for developing a database from various readily available sources; that it can conveniently integrate quantitative analysis, data manipulation, and visualization in one operating environment; and that GIS is uniquely capable of performing spatial analyses that are critical to the selection of bicycle routes.