Using Geocomputation to explore the active travel impacts of new roads and railways

There has been relatively little GIS work focussing on active travel impacts of infrastructure projects despite the high potential for new schemes to affect walking and cycling, the clear geographic footprint of major projects and the increased policy interest in these modes of transport in recent years. Motivated by the need to ensure active travel is accounted for, this paper sets out methods for active travel impact assessment, based on three types of impact. We look at Severance, when new infrastructure cuts across routes with high active travel potential; parallels, opportunities for constructing new routes parallel new infrastructure; and integration with existing transport services, where new or different active travel options are unlocked by new infrastructure. The impacts are explored using example datasets and new functions developed in the stplanr R package; a future direction of travel will be applying these methods to a real case study.