Decision Support Tools for Micromobility – Informing ‘Where’ and ‘What’ to Build

Micromobility confers significant economic, environmental and health benefits, and appropriate infrastructure is fundamental for the promotion of micromobility activities.

Lee Roberts, a Research Associate at City Futures Research Centre at UNSW, presents two decision-support tools under development at UNSW and aimed at assisting with the rollout of micromobility infrastructure.

The first of these tools helps determine 'where' to build. Councils and State governments often face the problem of choosing where to locate cycling infrastructure to promote micromobility and serve various travel needs.  This tool brings together a wide range of data sources, including census, crowd-sourced GPS data and a survey, to identify different micromobility users, their potential destinations and preferred routes. The tool will assist both local area decision making and with strategic cycling corridors. It will be an on-line interactive tool with a user-friendly interface to help decision makers identify and prioritise potential areas and road segments for micromobility infrastructure improvement.

Knowing where to build is sometimes not enough, since the deployment of micromobility infrastructure faces real-world constraints. The second tool helps identify 'what' to build, given actual street conditions. It has been developed from an extensive literature review of experiences around the world, including best practices and lessons learnt in the design of micromobility infrastructure. This tool also provides an interactive experience – taking user inputs about the specifics of the street segments and traffic conditions, then providing a range of design recommendations that cater for constraints and maximise available space for micromobility activities.