1.2 Demerits of cycling as an alternative
Having justified the selection of bicycle route as the alternative mode of transport to reduce the traffic problem, discussion on the demerits cannot be neglected. Most of the time, cycling is often associated with only regions which are sufficiently flat. The reason is obvious: cycling demands a muscular effort and must therefore be practiced in flat terrains. Given the undulating contours of NUS, this is indeed a major drawback of cycling as a form of commuting from point to point. Secondly, it is certainly true that there are too many accidents which involve cyclists. Safety is a real problem for cyclists, as it is for pedestrians, which explains the recent legislation to discourage cycling on pedestrian pavements. Riding among vehicles which are often traveling substantially faster, cyclists are also at the mercy of car and heavy vehicle drivers.
Effort has been taken to incorporate these two shortcomings of cycling into the analysis, so as to achieve an acceptable, if not pleasant level of comfort, to commute using bicycles within the campus. As will be elaborated later in the paper, the multi-criteria approach stems from these two shortcomings. More specifically, attempt is made to seek the feasible routes by minimizing the number of safety violations and the degree of inclination of the routes by representing them as the objective function.
The last point for contemplation is the influence of weather. Singapore, being a tropical country with high humidity and unbearable heat during some time of the day, may not be the best location to encourage commuting via cycling. In reality, research by the European Commission (1999) reveals that the climatic features which have a really dissuasive influence on cyclists are pouring rain and snow. However, the short distances of trips within the campus considered, appropriate clothing and a suitable infrastructure greatly reduce the negative impact of atmospheric conditions. Though these observations were derived from the European countries, with suitable ancillary facilities, the detriments of the local weather can be negated effectively.
Discussions on the merits and demerits of using the bicycle as a mode of transport warrants further investigation on the possibility of designing bicycle routes for intra-campus commuting.
2. Study Objectives and Scope
With the target set to design the feasible cycling routes that can cater to the needs of the population in NUS, the objective has been defined in stages that would finally project the best feasible bicycle network of the campus:
- To determine the origin and destination points based on the student flow.
- To derive the constraints and multiple criteria evaluation function from the literature review and field studies.
- To formulate the constraints and evaluation function into the appropriate mathematical equivalent capable of analysis in a GIS environment.
- Perform analysis to obtain potentially feasible cycling routes using GIS.
- To verify the feasibility of the cycling routes found through field investigation.