Equitable improvement of cycle networks – AMES_CYCLABLES

The adaptation of the road network to encourage safe cycling practices is a significant challenge, driven by concerns related to climate change, air quality, and public health. In this project, we aim to develop methods to propose, for example, to municipalities looking to expand their cycling network, cycling facilities that enhance both the safety of cycling lanes and equity of access criteria, all within budget constraints. This project will benefit from a multidisciplinary collaboration between researchers in urban planning, geography, cartography and operations research.

In the first phase, we aim to use open data to build indicators of equity of access by cross-referencing data on the cycling network with socio-economic and territorial indicators, as well as with current and potential uses of the cycling network. In the second phase, the main challenge will be modelling and solving a set of new problems related to equity of access to services and network safety. These problems are combinatorial in nature and thus very difficult to solve, and the development of resolution methods for handling real-size data, i.e., at the scale of a regional metropolis, is a challenge in itself. The developed methods will be tested on the Tours Métropole Val-de-Loire EPCI, and the relevance of the results will be analysed with the cross-disciplinary input of the team. The proposed methodology can be replicated in other French cities since the data used will be open.