Abstract:
Cape Town can be described as a Starter Cycling City as it has a policy intention to grow
the mode share of cycling from a marginal base to about 8% by 2030. With a possible 1.5
million peak period trips, this would amount to 120 000 bicycle trips. It is not clear that
strategies that have been employed to date are likely to help achieve this goal. This paper
builds on a targeted approach to promote cycling, focussing interventions to enable cycling
within one geographic node at a time and for specific market segments prevalent in each
node. Previous work identified the substantial student community in the Bellville area of
Cape Town as a market segment that is likely to adopt cycling should the main barriers to
cycling be removed. Students at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology were
surveyed using a Best-Worst scaling approach to determine their attitudes and key
barriers to cycling. Safety and security concerns were raised as among the most
significant barriers to cycling, which aligns with the attitudes of cyclists globally and
commuters in South Africa. In contrast, students don’t view the fitness or discomfort as a
barrier to cycling, and very few students experience family or social pressure to keep them
from cycling. This paper concludes with insights gained from the survey, and how this
information might contribute towards achieving the City’s objective to grow cycling as a
mode.
