Abstract

Bicycling is a sustainable mode of transportation given its health benefits, reduced air and noise pollution, savings in fuel consumption, and role in shifting demand away from the automobile. A significant increase of bicycle users is an aim of many cities around the world. Responding to this, various cities announced their strategies to extend and/or upgrade their bikeway
networks. However, there is a disconnection between the strategies to support bicycles and road management systems, which are typically used for optimal scheduling of maintenance and interventions for roads’ infrastructure. Traditional road management systems consider neither the need to sustain bicycle pathways at good levels of service, nor consider bicycling demand to prioritize their selection. This thesis extends road management systems to support bicycling networks. This enables the ability to optimally allocate available resources for sustaining the surface of bicycle pathways in good condition, and implement physically-separated bicycle lanes to enhance safety conditions and encourage bicycle ridership. A simple formulation of bicycle demand is proposed; it employs the capabilities of smartphones for collecting and estimating bicycling demand based on GPS trajectories of cyclists. Goal programming optimization is applied to address scheduling of maintenance and upgrade investments of pathways. Two scenarios are investigated with different annual budgets. The results show that the first scenario allows a rapid upgrade of existing bicycle lanes to protected paths while accomplishing good conditions of pavements. However, the second scenario is not able to prevent the deterioration of pavement segments.