Determination of bicycle service areas around metro stations for dedicated bicycling infrastructure provision in congested urban areas

Providing dedicated bicycling infrastructure in transit catchments ensures safe and convenient access to metro stations. Its provision is challenging in congested urban areas, and it can be constructed around stations to a certain extent. This research identifies four-parametric logistic (4PL) curve as the appropriate distance decay (DD) function to capture the cycle ridership variation with distance from the station. The trip length range corresponding to the maximum rate of increase in ridership governed by the curve's upper and lower bend points rationally delineates the region where infrastructure provision can yield maximum patronage. We also test and prove the hypothesis that rail alignment and station spacing, station type, and station location characteristics affect the bicycling service area. This is achieved by dividing the catchment area into six radial sectors based on its adjacency to the metro line and estimating the bend points on the curve for each sector.