How Do People Cycle in Amsterdam, Netherlands?: Estimating Cyclists’ Route Choice Determinants with GPS Data from an Urban Area

Nowadays, the bicycle is seen as a sustainable and healthy substitute for the car in urban environments. The Netherlands is the leading country in bicycle use, especially in urban environments. Yet route choice models featuring inner-city travel that includes cyclists are lacking. This study estimated a cyclists’ route choice model for the inner city of Amsterdam, Netherlands, on the basis of 3,045 trips collected with GPS data. The main contribution of this study was the construction of the choice set with an empirical approach, which used only the observed trips in the data set to compose the choice alternatives. The findings suggested that cyclists were insensitive to separate cycle paths in Amsterdam, a city characterized by a dense cycle path network in which cycling was the most prominent mode of travel. In addition, cyclists were found to minimize travel distance and the number of intersections per kilometer. The impact of distance on route choice increased during the morning peak when schedule constraints were more prevalent. Furthermore, overlapping routes were more likely to be chosen by cyclists, everything else being the same.