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Abstract
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Background
E-bikes are a growing market around the world and public policies regarding their usage are varied among cities. There is a need to inform policy decisions about integrating e-bikes into urban transportation systems. While previous studies on bicycle convenience focused on the cycling environment itself, assessment of a new transport mode, like e-bikes, requires insights into their potential and limitations when introduced into the existing urban transportation system.
Methods
E-bike applicability is defined as the change of convenience due to their introduction and the service area is adopted as a measure of convenience for a transportation mode. Indices for e-bike applicability are proposed by comparing the service area of e-bikes to public transit and to conventional bicycles considering travel time and physical energy expenditure as two measures. The methods are applied to four Japanese cities to assess applicability on two scales, namely a community-wide scale and a city-wide scale.
Results
On the community-wide scale, e-bikes are applicable to areas with steep road gradients, areas with geographical obstacles requiring detours, and areas lacking public transportation. E-bike applicable communities with high likely e-bike demand are selected. On the city-wide scale, e-bikes are applicable to short distance trips in cities with well-developed transit systems, with applicable travel time and physical energy expenditure range of 65 min and 1.25 MET-h round trip, respectively. E-bikes are a promising alternative means of transport in local cities; they also have limitation in terms of physical energy expenditure compared to transit.
Conclusions
The indices can be valuable tools providing urban planners with knowledge about e-bikes on a community-wide scale and a city-wide scale. |