Dataset Information

Evaluating the travel, physical activity and carbon impacts of a 'natural experiment' in the provision of new walking and cycling infrastructure: methods for the core module of the iConnect study.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Improving infrastructure to support walking and cycling is often regarded as fundamental to encouraging their widespread uptake. However, there is little evidence that specific provision of this kind has led to a significant increase in walking or cycling in practice, let alone wider impacts such as changes in overall physical activity or carbon emissions. Connect2 is a major new project that aims to promote walking and cycling in the UK by improving local pedestrian and cycle routes. It therefore provides a useful opportunity to contribute new evidence in this field by means of a natural experimental study.

Methods and analysis

iConnect is an independent study that aims to integrate the perspectives of public health and transport research on the measurement and evaluation of the travel, physical activity and carbon impacts of the Connect2 programme. In this paper, the authors report the study design and methods for the iConnect core module. This comprised a cohort study of residents living within 5 km of three case study Connect2 projects in Cardiff, Kenilworth and Southampton, supported by a programme of qualitative interviews with key informants about the projects. Participants were asked to complete postal questionnaires, repeated before and after the opening of the new infrastructure, which collected data on demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, travel, car fuel purchasing and physical activity, and potential psychosocial and environmental correlates and mediators of those behaviours. In the absence of suitable no-intervention control groups, the study design drew on heterogeneity in exposure both within and between case study samples to provide for a counterfactual.

Ethics and dissemination

The study was approved by the University of Southampton Research Ethics Committee. The findings will be disseminated through academic presentations, peer-reviewed publications and the study website (http://www.iconnect.ac.uk) and by means of a national seminar at the end of the study.

SUBMITTER: Ogilvie D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3274720 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Evaluating the travel, physical activity and carbon impacts of a 'natural experiment' in the provision of new walking and cycling infrastructure: methods for the core module of the iConnect study.

Ogilvie David D Bull Fiona F Cooper Ashley A Rutter Harry H Adams Emma E Brand Christian C Ghali Karen K Jones Tim T Mutrie Nanette N Powell Jane J Preston John J Sahlqvist Shannon S Song Yena Y

BMJ open 20120202 1

<h4>Introduction</h4>Improving infrastructure to support walking and cycling is often regarded as fundamental to encouraging their widespread uptake. However, there is little evidence that specific provision of this kind has led to a significant increase in walking or cycling in practice, let alone wider impacts such as changes in overall physical activity or carbon emissions. Connect2 is a major new project that aims to promote walking and cycling in the UK by improving local pedestrian and cyc ...[more]

PMID: 22307104

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Project description:IntroductionWalking and cycling bring health and environmental benefits, but there is little robust evidence that changing the built environment promotes these activities in populations. This study evaluated the effects of new transport infrastructure on active commuting and physical activity.Study designQuasi-experimental analysis nested within a cohort study.Setting/participantsFour hundred and sixty-nine adult commuters, recruited through a predominantly workplace-based strategy, who lived within 30 kilometers of Cambridge, United Kingdom and worked in areas of the city to be served by the new transport infrastructure.InterventionThe Cambridgeshire Guided Busway opened in 2011 and comprised a new bus network and a traffic-free walking and cycling route. Exposure to the intervention was defined using the shortest distance from each participant's home to the busway.Main outcome measuresChange in weekly time spent in active commuting between 2009 and 2012, measured by validated 7-day recall instrument. Secondary outcomes were changes in total weekly time spent walking and cycling and in recreational and overall physical activity, measured using the validated Recent Physical Activity Questionnaire. Data were analyzed in 2014.ResultsIn multivariable multinomial regression models--adjusted for potential sociodemographic, geographic, health, and workplace confounders; baseline active commuting; and home or work relocation-exposure to the busway was associated with a significantly greater likelihood of an increase in weekly cycle commuting time (relative risk ratio=1.34, 95% CI=1.03, 1.76) and with an increase in overall time spent in active commuting among the least active commuters at baseline (relative risk ratio=1.76, 95% CI=1.16, 2.67). The study found no evidence of changes in recreational or overall physical activity.ConclusionsProviding new sustainable transport infrastructure was effective in promoting an increase in active commuting. These findings provide new evidence to support reconfiguring transport systems as part of public health improvement strategies.

Project description:BACKGROUND:Few studies have evaluated the effects of infrastructural improvements to promote walking and cycling. Even fewer have explored how the context and mechanisms of such interventions may interact to produce their outcomes. METHODS:This mixed-method analysis forms part of the UK iConnect study, which aims to evaluate new walking and cycling routes at three sites - Cardiff, Kenilworth and Southampton. Applying a complementary follow-up approach, we first identified differences in awareness and patterns of use of the infrastructure in survey data from a cohort of adult residents at baseline in spring 2010 (n?=?3516) and again one (n?=?1849) and two (n?=?1510) years later following completion of the infrastructural projects (Analysis 1). We subsequently analysed data from 17 semi-structured interviews with key informants to understand how the new schemes might influence walking and cycling (Analysis 2a). In parallel, we analysed cohort survey data on environmental perceptions (Analysis 2b). We integrated these two datasets to interpret differences across the sites consistent with a theoretical framework that hypothesised that the schemes would improve connectivity and the social environment. RESULTS:After two years, 52% of Cardiff respondents reported using the infrastructure compared with 37% in Kenilworth and 22% in Southampton. Patterns of use did not vary substantially between sites. 17% reported using the new infrastructure for transport, compared with 39% for recreation. Environmental perceptions at baseline were generally unfavourable, with the greatest improvements in Cardiff. Qualitative data revealed that all schemes had a recreational focus to varying extents, that the visibility of schemes to local people might be an important mechanism driving use and that the scale and design of the schemes and the contrast they presented with existing infrastructure may have influenced their use. CONCLUSIONS:The dominance of recreational uses may have reflected the specific local goals of some of the projects and the discontinuity of the new infrastructure from a satisfactory network of feeder routes. Greater use in Cardiff may have been driven by the mechanisms of greater visibility and superior design features within the context of an existing environment that was conducive neither to walking or cycling nor to car travel.

Project description:Green infrastructure (GI) in urban areas may be adopted as a passive control system to reduce air pollutant concentrations. However, current dispersion models offer limited modelling options to evaluate its impact on ambient pollutant concentrations. The scope of this review revolves around the following question: how can GI be considered in readily available dispersion models to allow evaluation of its impacts on pollutant concentrations and health risk assessment? We examined the published literature on the parameterisation of deposition velocities and datasets for both particulate matter and gaseous pollutants that are required for deposition schemes. We evaluated the limitations of different air pollution dispersion models at two spatial scales - microscale (i.e. 10-500?m) and macroscale (i.e. 5-100?km) - in considering the effects of GI on air pollutant concentrations and exposure alteration. We conclude that the deposition schemes that represent GI impacts in detail are complex, resource-intensive, and involve an abundant volume of input data. An appropriate handling of GI characteristics (such as aerodynamic effect, deposition of air pollutants and surface roughness) in dispersion models is necessary for understanding the mechanism of air pollutant concentrations simulation in presence of GI at different spatial scales. The impacts of GI on air pollutant concentrations and health risk assessment (e.g., mortality, morbidity) are partly explored. The i-Tree tool with the BenMap model has been used to estimate the health outcomes of annually-averaged air pollutant removed by deposition over GI canopies at the macroscale. However, studies relating air pollution health risk assessments due to GI-related changes in short-term exposure, via pollutant concentrations redistribution at the microscale and enhanced atmospheric pollutant dilution by increased surface roughness at the macroscale, along with deposition, are rare. Suitable treatments of all physical and chemical processes in coupled dispersion-deposition models and assessments against real-world scenarios are vital for health risk assessments.

Project description:BackgroundA modal shift to cycling has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide health co-benefits. Methods, models, and tools are needed to estimate the potential for cycling uptake and communicate to policy makers the range of impacts this would have.Methods and findingsThe Impacts of Cycling Tool (ICT) is an open source model with a web interface for visualising travel patterns and comparing the impacts of different scenarios of cycling uptake. It is currently applied to England. The ICT allows users to visualise individual and trip-level data from the English National Travel Survey (NTS), 2004-2014 sample, 132,000 adults. It models scenarios in which there is an increase in the proportion of the population who cycle regularly, using a distance-based propensity approach to model which trips would be cycled. From this, the model estimates likely impact on travel patterns, health, and greenhouse gas emissions. Estimates of nonoccupational physical activity are generated by fusing the NTS with the English Active People Survey (APS, 2013-2014, 559,515 adults) to create a synthetic population. Under 'equity' scenarios, we investigate what would happen if cycling levels increased equally among all age and gender categories, as opposed to in proportion to the profile of current cyclists. Under electric assist bike (pedelecs or 'e-bike') scenarios, the probability of cycling longer trips increases, based on the e-bike data from the Netherlands, 2013-2014 Dutch Travel Survey (50,868 adults).Outcomes are presented across domains including transport (trip duration and trips by mode), health (physical activity levels, years of life lost), and car transport-related CO2 emissions. Results can be visualised for the whole population and various subpopulations (region, age, gender, and ethnicity). The tool is available at www.pct.bike/ict. If the proportion of the English population who cycle regularly increased from 4.8% to 25%, then there would be notable reductions in car miles and passenger related CO2 emissions (2.2%) and health benefits (2.1% reduction in years of life lost due to premature mortality). If the new cyclists had access to e-bikes, then mortality reductions would be similar, while the reduction in car miles and CO2 emissions would be larger (2.7%). If take-up of cycling occurred equally by gender and age (under 80 years), then health benefits would be marginally greater (2.2%) but reduction in CO2 slightly smaller (1.8%). The study is limited by the quality and comparability of the input data (including reliance on self-report behaviours). As with all modelling studies, many assumptions are required and potentially important pathways excluded (e.g. injury, air pollution, and noise pollution).ConclusionThis study demonstrates a generalisable approach for using travel survey data to model scenarios of cycling uptake that can be applied to a wide range of settings. The use of individual-level data allows investigation of a wide range of outcomes, and variation across subgroups. Future work should investigate the sensitivity of results to assumptions and omissions, and if this varies across setting.

Project description:INTRODUCTION:Bicycling is promoted as a transportation and population health strategy globally. Yet bicycling has low uptake in North America (1%-2% of trips) compared with European bicycling cities (15%-40% of trips) and shows marked sex and age trends. Safety concerns due to collisions with motor vehicles are primary barriers.To attract the broader population to bicycling, many cities are making investments in bicycle infrastructure. These interventions hold promise for improving population health given the potential for increased physical activity and improved safety, but such outcomes have been largely unstudied. In 2016, the City of Victoria, Canada, committed to build a connected network of infrastructure that separates bicycles from motor vehicles, designed to attract people of 'all ages and abilities' to bicycling.This natural experiment study examines the impacts of the City of Victoria's investment in a bicycle network on active travel and safety outcomes. The specific objectives are to (1) estimate changes in active travel, perceived safety and bicycle safety incidents; (2) analyse spatial inequities in access to bicycle infrastructure and safety incidents; and (3) assess health-related economic benefits. METHODS AND ANALYSIS:The study is in three Canadian cities (intervention: Victoria; comparison: Kelowna, Halifax). We will administer population-based surveys in 2016, 2018 and 2021 (1000 people/city). The primary outcome is the proportion of people reporting bicycling. Secondary outcomes are perceived safety and bicycle safety incidents. Spatial analyses will compare the distribution of bicycle infrastructure and bicycle safety incidents across neighbourhoods and across time. We will also calculate the economic benefits of bicycling using WHO's Health Economic Assessment Tool. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION:This study received approval from the Simon Fraser University Office of Research Ethics (study no. 2016s0401). Findings will be disseminated via a website, presentations to stakeholders, at academic conferences and through peer-reviewed journal articles.

Project description:ObjectivesIncreasing walking and cycling, and reducing motorised transport, are health and environmental priorities. This paper examines levels and trends in the use of different commute modes in England and Wales, both overall and with respect to small-area deprivation. It also investigates whether commute modal share can serve as a proxy for travel behaviour more generally.Methods23.7 million adult commuters reported their usual main mode of travelling to work in the 2011 census in England and Wales; similar data were available for 1971-2001. Indices of Multiple Deprivation were used to characterise socio-economic patterning. The National Travel Survey (2002-2010) was used to examine correlations between commute modal share and modal share of total travel time. These correlations were calculated across 150 non-overlapping populations defined by region, year band and income.ResultsAmong commuters in 2011, 67.1% used private motorised transport as their usual main commute mode (-1.8 percentage-point change since 2001); 17.8% used public transport (+1.8% change); 10.9% walked (-0.1% change); and 3.1% cycled (+0.1% change). Walking and, to a marginal extent, cycling were more common among those from deprived areas, but these gradients had flattened over the previous decade to the point of having essentially disappeared for cycling. In the National Travel Survey, commute modal share and total modal share were reasonably highly correlated for private motorised transport (r = 0.94), public transport (r = 0.96), walking (r = 0.88 excluding London) and cycling (r = 0.77).ConclusionsEngland and Wales remain car-dependent, but the trends are slightly more encouraging. Unlike many health behaviours, it is more common for socio-economically disadvantaged groups to commute using physically active modes. This association is, however, weakening and may soon reverse for cycling. At a population level, commute modal share provides a reasonable proxy for broader travel patterns, enhancing the value of the census in characterising background trends and evaluating interventions.

Dataset Information

Evaluating the travel, physical activity and carbon impacts of a 'natural experiment' in the provision of new walking and cycling infrastructure: methods for the core module of the iConnect study.

Introduction

Methods and analysis

Ethics and dissemination

Publications

Evaluating the travel, physical activity and carbon impacts of a 'natural experiment' in the provision of new walking and cycling infrastructure: methods for the core module of the iConnect study.

Similar Datasets

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