Urban Active Transportation Behaviour is Sensitive to the Fresh Start Effect
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Municipal governments are investing billions of dollars to facilitate urban active transportation (AT), however, little is known about population-level AT behaviours. Triangulating real world data for cycling traffic (n=1.2M counts), corporate bicycle parking (n=56,307 counts), vehicular traffic (n=6.3M counts) and fitness centre attendance (n=563,290 counts) in a large Canadian city, we show a significant 20% decline in AT-based cycling traffic over the course of a work week, replicated over 5 consecutive years. The decline AT (-147 cyclists/day; 95% CI: -199.0 to -94.6 cyclists/day) and use of occupational bicycle parking (-12 cyclists/day; 95% CI: -17 to -7 cyclists/day) were similar to the weekly decline in fitness centre attendance. In contrast, daily vehicular traffic increased 7% from the beginning to the end of a work week (+2248 cars/day; 95% CI: 2022 to +3674 cars/day). This study provides population-level evidence that urban AT behaviour is susceptible to the “Fresh Start Effect” heuristic.
