Abstract
With rising gas prices, the threat of climate change, and the growing
problem of obesity, bikeway networks have become increasingly popular over
the past few years as an infrastructure to encourage bicycling. This thesis
examines the feasibility of building bicycle lanes in the town of Truro. The costs
of building a bicycle lane network in Truro are compared with the benefits. The
benefits of building bicycle lanes are the benefits of switching from car travel to
bicycle travel. The internal and external costs and benefits are quantified
following Litman (2009). To compute these benefits, it is necessary to estimate
how many people would be likely to switch from using a motor vehicle to using
a bicycle if indeed a bicycle lane was in place, and how many additional
kilometres would be traveled by bicycle if there was a bike lane. These estimates
are found using Statistics Canada census data on number of commuters on each
mode of transportation, data on average commuting distance, and previous
research on the impact of bicycle infrastructure on bicycle commuting. Once
these estimates have been completed, the benefits of bicycling are compared with
the costs of construction of the bicycle lane network to find the estimated net
benefits. Results show that when only commuters are taken into account, costs of
building a bicycle lane network exceed benefits.