Search

E-scooters are rapidly changing transportation in US cities and university campuses. Hailed as a convenient, inexpensive solution for “last mile” and other short trips, e-scooters are available in over 100 US cities and were used for nearly forty million trips in 2018. Yet relatively little is known about e-scooter use, including who uses them, for which types of trips, and the perceived benefits and barriers related to e-scooters. This information is particularly important in light of concerns about safety and the loss of physical activity (PA) due to replacing walking and biking with e-scooting. In this paper, we aim to characterize trends in the barriers and benefits related to e-scooter use within a professional population. We surveyed 1,256 university staff in Tempe, AZ, finding that 36% of respondents had ridden e-scooters and 40% indicated that they would do so outside of campus in the next year. Overwhelmingly, e-scooters are seen as a convenient way to travel, particularly in the heat and compared to walking. However, demographic differences were notable, particularly regarding barriers. African American and non-white Hispanic respondents were significantly more likely than non-Hispanic white respondents to intend to try e-scooters and to be unhappy with current transportation options. E-scooters are also associated with concerns about traffic safety – particularly for women – and barriers related to being able to find working equipment when needed. These findings suggest that e-scooters fill an important transportation niche and may contribute to transportation equity, and that efforts to address barriers could further enhance that contribution.

Highlights • Canadian Community Health Survey captures more bicycling/walking than the census. • Across data sources, walking more common among women than men. • Men had higher risk of a fatality than women for bicycling and walking. • Both data sources have key limitations for measuring bicycling and walking. • Implementing a national household travel survey should be a priority in Canada., Canada does not conduct a national household travel survey, resulting in a data gap on walking and bicycling. These data are key to surveillance of physical activity and health, as well as in epidemiological injury risk calculations. This study explored the use of available national data sources, the Canadian census and the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS), to tally walking and bicycling and examine trends in fatality risk. Estimates of the percentage and number of Canadians walking or bicycling to work were calculated for 1996–2016 using the census. The CCHS was used to estimate the number and proportion of Canadians walking or bicycling for leisure (2000–2014) and to work or school (2008–2014). We combine these data with National Collision Database data on the number of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities (1999–2017) and compare trends in fatality risk over time using each dataset. Across all data sources, walking was more common among women, while bicycling was more common among men. Men were at higher fatality risk than women. These results should be interpreted with caution given limitations this study identifies in census and CCHS data, including narrow definitions for bicycling behaviour, lack of detail regarding amount of use, and inconsistency of questions asked over time. A national household travel survey should be a priority for public health purposes in Canada.

Objectives: Bicycling is a form of active transportation with a number of health benefits but carries a high risk of injury compared to other transportation modes. Safety intervention evaluations often produce results in the form of ratios, which can be difficult to communicate to policy-makers. The primary objective of this study was to estimate the number of bicycling injuries on an urban corridor preventable by separated bicycling infrastructure. Methods: Stakeholders identified a key corridor with multiple segments having bicycling infrastructure but most of the corridor lacking similar infrastructure. We counted bicyclist volume along this route and used secondary data to supplement counts missing due to COVID-19. We used two reference studies including local bicycling population to estimate benefit of separated bicycling infrastructure and applied this to a city-wide estimate of baseline risk of injury per kilometre bicycled, which used a combination of secondary data sources including police, health care and travel survey data. Finally, we adjusted baseline risk to account for increased bicyclist volume during and following the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: We estimated installation of fully separated cycle tracks along one Toronto corridor would prevent approximately 152.9 injuries and 0.9 fatalities over a 10-year period. Discussion: Our results underscore the benefits of separated bicycling infrastructure. We identify several caveats for our results, including the limitations of studies used to estimate relative risk of infrastructure. Our method could be adapted for use in other cities or along other corridors. Finally, we discuss the role of preventable burden estimates as a knowledge translation tool.

Safety concerns are a primary deterrent to bicycling. Bicycle infrastructure is both preferred and safer for bicycling. In this paper, we examine the association between availability of bicycle infrastructure and perceptions of bicycling safety amongst over 3000 bicyclists living in six large Canadian and US cities. In three repeat cross-sectional surveys (2012, 2013 and 2014), adults living in Boston, Chicago, New York, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver were surveyed about their bicycling habits, safety perceptions, and demographic characteristics as part of the International Bikeshare Impacts on Cycling and Collisions Study (n = 16,864). Participants were assigned a measure for the availability of bicycle infrastructure (a component of Bike Score® called Bike Lane Score, range 0–100) based on their residential postal code. We used weighted multinomial regression models to examine associations between perceived bicycling safety and the availability of bicycle infrastructure, accounting for sociodemographic characteristics, amongst those who report bicycling in the past month (n = 3446; weighted n = 3493). Overall, 57.9% perceived bicycling in their city as safe, 15.1% as neutral, and 27.0% as dangerous. Our model indicates that, within cities, bicyclists with greater bicycle infrastructure availability had improved odds of perceiving bicycling as safe. Specifically, a 10-unit increase in Bike Lane Score was associated with 6% higher odds of a bicyclist perceiving the safety of bicycling as safe compared to neutral. Bicyclists who are male, younger, lower income, have young children, have a high-school education, and bicycle more frequently are predicted to be more likely to perceive bicycling in their city to be safe. These results suggest that increasing the availability of bicycle facilities by expanding bicycling networks may result in increases in perceptions of bicycling safety for existing bicyclists, but also that individual characteristics play a substantial role in bicycling safety perceptions.

Transportation shifts in Canada precipitated by COVID-19 may persist into recovery. We examined commuters in a national survey (Canadian Perspectives Survey Series 3) and commute changes attributed to COVID-19 risk. We modeled associations of changing commute with pre-COVID-19 mode, adjusting for coarse socio-demographic covariates. We found that all out-of-home commute modes declined during COVID-19, with increases in telework. Commuting by public transit was most strongly associated with change in commute mode to avoid COVID-19 risk. Among pre-COVID-19 transit commuters, 18.2% continue to rely on transit, and personal motor vehicle use is more common (13.0%) than walking (3.4%) or cycling (2.9%).

A docked public bicycle share program (PBSP) makes bicycles available to the public. There is limited evidence on the impact of PBSPs on safety. We estimated the impacts of implementing a PBSP on the likelihood of bicycle crashes using a difference in differences approach with repeated cross-sectional survey data (self-reported crashes) collected in 8 Canadian and US cities, from 2012-2014. Relative to control cities (Detroit, Philadelphia, Vancouver), we found that the odds of reporting a bicycling crash did not change after implementing a PBSP (New York, Chicago) and were lower in cities that had existing PBSPs (Boston, Montreal, Toronto).

Increased cycling uptake can improve population health, but barriers include real and perceived risks. Crash risk factors are important to understand in order to improve safety and increase cycling uptake. Many studies of cycling crash risk are based on combining diverse sources of crash and exposure data, such as police databases (crashes) and travel surveys (exposure), based on shared geography and time. When conflating crash and exposure data from different sources, the risk factors that can be quantified are only those variables common to both datasets, which tend to be limited to geography (e.g. countries, provinces, municipalities) and a few general road user characteristics (e.g. gender and age strata). The Physical Activity through Sustainable Transport Approaches (PASTA) project was a prospective cohort study that collected both crash and exposure data from seven European cities (Antwerp, Barcelona, London, Örebro, Rome, Vienna and Zürich). The goal of this research was to use data from the PASTA project to quantify exposure-adjusted crash rates and model adjusted crash risk factors, including detailed sociodemographic characteristics, attitudes about transportation, neighbourhood built environment features and location by city. We used negative binomial regression to model the influence of risk factors independent of exposure. Of the 4,180 cyclists, 10.2 % reported 535 crashes. We found that overall crash rates were 6.7 times higher in London, the city with the highest crash rate, relative to Örebro, the city with the lowest rate. Differences in overall crash rates between cities are driven largely by crashes that did not require medical treatment and that involved motor-vehicles. In a parsimonious crash risk model, we found higher crash risks for less frequent cyclists, men, those who perceive cycling to not be well regarded in their neighbourhood, and those who live in areas of very high building density. Longitudinal collection of crash and exposure data can provide important insights into individual differences in crash risk. Substantial differences in crash risks between cities, neighbourhoods and population groups suggest there is great potential for improvement in cycling safety.

Official sources of cyclist safety data suffer from underreporting and bias. Crowdsourced safety data have the potential to supplement official sources and to provide new data on near-miss incidents. BikeMaps.org is a global online mapping tool that allows cyclists to record the location and details of near misses and collisions they experience. However, little is known about how the characteristics of near-miss and collision events compare. Further, the question remains whether the characteristics of crowdsourced collision data are similar to those of collision data captured by official insurance reports. The objectives of this study were twofold: ( a) to assess similarities and differences in near misses and collisions reported to BikeMaps.org and ( b) to assess similarities and differences in collisions reported to BikeMaps.org and to an official insurance data set. Logistic regression was used first to model the odds of crowdsourced near-miss reports as opposed to collision reports and then to model the odds of crowdsourced as opposed to official insurance collision reports, as a function of incident circumstances. The results indicated higher odds of crowdsourced reports of near misses than of crowdsourced collision reports for commute trips, interactions with motor vehicles, and in locations without bicycle-specific facilities. In addition, relative to insurance reports, crowdsourced collision reports were associated with peak traffic hours, nonintersection locations, and locations where bicycle facilities were present. These analyses indicated that crowdsourced collision data have potential to fill in gaps in reports to official collision sources and that crowdsourced near-miss reporting may be influenced by perceptions of risk.

Globally, alcohol consumption has considerable public health, social, and economic costs. Per capita alcohol sales data are the most accurate means of quantifying consumption, but can overestimate local consumption in areas of high tourism. The goal of this research was to investigate a method for adjusting estimates of per capita alcohol consumption for tourist influence in 26 census divisions (CD) in British Columbia, Canada. Modifying estimates involved calculating temporally weighted annual tourist populations for each CD, enumerating the proportion of tourists to local populations, and using this proportion to derive local per capita consumption modified for tourist alcohol consumption. The adjustments for tourist influence decreased consumption estimates by approximately 2% provincially and between 1% and 16%, regionally. This research provides a foundational model for estimating temporally weighted regional tourist populations and applying them to adjust alcohol consumption estimates.

Introduction Measuring bicycling behaviour is critical to bicycling research. A common study design question is whether to measure bicycling behaviour once (cross-sectional) or multiple times (longitudinal). The Physical Activity through Sustainable Transport Approaches (PASTA) project is a longitudinal cohort study of over 10,000 participants from seven European cities over two years. We used PASTA data as a case study to investigate how measuring once or multiple times impacted three factors: a) sample size b) participation bias and c) accuracy of bicycling behaviour estimates. Methods We compared two scenarios: i) as if only the baseline data were collected (cross-sectional approach) and ii) as if the baseline plus repeat follow-ups were collected (longitudinal approach). We compared each approach in terms of differences in sample size, distribution of sociodemographic characteristics, and bicycling behaviour. In the cross-sectional approach, we measured participants long-term bicycling behaviour by asking for recall of typical weekly habits, while in the longitudinal approach we measured by taking the average of bicycling reported for each 7-day period. Results Relative to longitudinal, the cross-sectional approach provided a larger sample size and slightly better representation of certain sociodemographic groups, with worse estimates of long-term bicycling behaviour. The longitudinal approach suffered from participation bias, especially the drop-out of more frequent bicyclists. The cross-sectional approach under-estimated the proportion of the population that bicycled, as it captured ‘typical’ behaviour rather than 7-day recall. The magnitude and directionality of the difference between typical weekly (cross-sectional approach) and the average 7-day recall (longitudinal approach) varied depending on how much bicycling was initially reported. Conclusions In our case study we found that measuring bicycling once, resulted in a larger sample with better representation of sociodemographic groups, but different estimates of long-term bicycling behaviour. Passive detection of bicycling through mobile apps could be a solution to the identified issues.

IntroductionBicycling is promoted as a transportation and population health strategy globally. Yet bicycling has low uptake in North America (1%–2% of trips) compared with European bicycling cities (15%–40% of trips) and shows marked sex and age trends. Safety concerns due to collisions with motor vehicles are primary barriers.To attract the broader population to bicycling, many cities are making investments in bicycle infrastructure. These interventions hold promise for improving population health given the potential for increased physical activity and improved safety, but such outcomes have been largely unstudied. In 2016, the City of Victoria, Canada, committed to build a connected network of infrastructure that separates bicycles from motor vehicles, designed to attract people of ‘all ages and abilities’ to bicycling.This natural experiment study examines the impacts of the City of Victoria’s investment in a bicycle network on active travel and safety outcomes. The specific objectives are to (1) estimate changes in active travel, perceived safety and bicycle safety incidents; (2) analyse spatial inequities in access to bicycle infrastructure and safety incidents; and (3) assess health-related economic benefits.Methods and analysisThe study is in three Canadian cities (intervention: Victoria; comparison: Kelowna, Halifax). We will administer population-based surveys in 2016, 2018 and 2021 (1000 people/city). The primary outcome is the proportion of people reporting bicycling. Secondary outcomes are perceived safety and bicycle safety incidents. Spatial analyses will compare the distribution of bicycle infrastructure and bicycle safety incidents across neighbourhoods and across time. We will also calculate the economic benefits of bicycling using WHO’s Health Economic Assessment Tool.Ethics and disseminationThis study received approval from the Simon Fraser University Office of Research Ethics (study no. 2016s0401). Findings will be disseminated via a website, presentations to stakeholders, at academic conferences and through peer-reviewed journal articles.

Radon is a carcinogenic radioactive gas produced by the decay of uranium. Accumulation of radon in residential structures contributes to lung cancer mortality. The goal of this research is to predict residential radon vulnerability classes for the province of British Columbia (BC) at aggregated spatial units. Spatially referenced indoor radon concentration data were partitioned into low, medium, and high classes of radon vulnerability. Radon vulnerability classes were then linked to environmental and housing data derived from existing geospatial datasets. A Balanced Random Forests algorithm was used to model environmental predictors of indoor radon vulnerability and values at un-sampled locations across BC. A model was generated and evaluated using accuracy, precision, and kappa statistics. The influence of predictor variables was investigated through variable importance and partial dependence plots. The model performed 34% better than a random classifier. Increased probabilities of high vulnerability were associated with cold and dry winters, close proximity to major river systems, and fluvioglacial and colluvial soil parent materials. The Kootenays and Columbia-Shuswap regions were most at risk. Here, we present a novel method for predictive radon mapping that is broadly applicable to regions throughout the world.

Background There is no safe concentration of radon gas, but guideline values provide threshold concentrations that are used to map areas at higher risk. These values vary between different regions, countries, and organizations, which can lead to differential classification of risk. For example the World Health Organization suggests a 100 Bq m−3value, while Health Canada recommends 200 Bq m−3. Our objective was to describe how different thresholds characterized ecological radon risk and their visual association with lung cancer mortality trends in British Columbia, Canada. Methods Eight threshold values between 50 and 600 Bq m−3 were identified, and classes of radon vulnerability were defined based on whether the observed 95th percentile radon concentration was above or below each value. A balanced random forest algorithm was used to model vulnerability, and the results were mapped. We compared high vulnerability areas, their estimated populations, and differences in lung cancer mortality trends stratified by smoking prevalence and sex. Results Classification accuracy improved as the threshold concentrations decreased and the area classified as high vulnerability increased. Majority of the population lived within areas of lower vulnerability regardless of the threshold value. Thresholds as low as 50 Bq m−3 were associated with higher lung cancer mortality, even in areas with low smoking prevalence. Temporal trends in lung cancer mortality were increasing for women, while decreasing for men. Conclusions Radon contributes to lung cancer in British Columbia. The results of the study contribute evidence supporting the use of a reference level lower than the current guideline of 200 Bq m−3 for the province.