Exposure of urban cyclists to air pollution, noise, and greenery: From spatio-temporal mapping to measuring the role of route-choice

Keywords: environmental exposure, cycling, active travel, travel environment, greenery, air pollution, noise, sustainable mobility
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 31

Abstract

Urban travel, especially active travel, exposes people to various environmental conditions with significant negative and positive health and well-being impacts. Despite the importance, understanding of travel-related environmental exposures has remained limited. Recent advances in the collection and availability of both environmental and mobility data at high resolution has enabled the integration of population-scale mobility data and urban-scale environmental data to obtain detailed exposure metrics for travel situations. These advancements provide new possibilities for understanding connections between environmental exposures and travel.

In this paper, we analyze air pollution, noise, and greenery exposure of urban cyclists in Helsinki, Finland. We used local bike-sharing system data with 3.1 million trips in 2019 and integrated spatially precise air pollution, noise, and greenery values to the modeled trip routes using an in-house developed Green Paths software for routing and exposure assessment. We mapped the spatial variation of exposures and estimated cyclists’ potential to improve their exposures with route choice. We also evaluated the similarity of air quality, noise, and greenery-optimized routes.

Our results show major spatial differences in cyclists’ exposure to noise and greenery while air pollution exposure is more equally distributed. The results demonstrate that cyclists can considerably improve their exposure with a route choice in Helsinki. However, only in a few areas. cyclists can optimize all three environmental exposures simultaneously.

While our results demonstrate how careful route planning can improve environmental exposure during cycling, we also call for increased attention in urban planning for the provision of healthier travel environments for everyone.