Cyclists’ exposure to air and noise pollution, comparative approach in seven cities

Abstract

Cyclists’ exposure to air and noise pollution is a growing field of study. A situation of transport injustice has been largely documented, showing that cyclists are more exposed than other road users to pollutions they do not produce themselves. Modeling cyclists’ exposures became an important issue to understand how to reduce them and how to include that issue in planning. However, many gaps are currently characterizing the field of cyclists’ exposure modeling studies: methodological discrepancy, few comparison analyses, cities in the Global South and noise exposure are both under-studied. This study fits in these gaps by proposing a comparative analysis of seven cities (Paris, Lyon, Copenhagen, Delhi, Mumbai, Montreal and Toronto) considering both noise and exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and applying a uniform methodology allowing for comparison and generalization of the results. The built models are critically analyzed, and used to map cyclists’ exposure. These maps of relative potential exposure provide interesting perspectives for planning at both the regional and local levels. We found a weak correlation between cyclists’ exposure to environmental noise and NO2. Noise depends more on characteristics of the micro-scale environment in which exposure occurs than NO2. Thus, planning to reduce cyclists’ exposure to noise can have significant effects. For NO2, the micro-scale environment only has a significant impact in Mumbai and Delhi. However, our results suggest that it might be difficult to systematically combine several dimensions of the quality of a bicycle network such as straightness, connectivity, safety, and reduced air and noise exposure.

Keywords

• Cyclist
• Exposure
• NO2
• Noise
• Pollution
• Planning