The use of the bicycle

The rediscovery of the bicycle by the public, by politicians and by professional urban transportation planners as a mode of transport which is perfectly in harmony with the goals of environmental protection, energy saving and personal fitness has stimulated this empirical study on the actual use of the bicycle by various population groups for obligatory and discretionary trip purposes. The influence on bicycle usage of such factors as age, education, car availability, residential density and town size, topography and time of year is analysed in this paper for selected population groups. For housewives from motorized households logit‐models were designed and calibrated to model their modal choice for shopping trips with special references to the bicycle. From the empirical results, the groups with the largest potentials for cycling are identified and the extent to which the potentials could be activated by specific policies is discussed. The research is based on a large sample held to be representative for...