The Oregonian: Secret habits of timid cyclists studied Urban transportation - A PSU researcher’s GPS units will reveal local routes used by less-confident riders

If you’re a cyclist who rides fewer than four days a week, Jennifer Dill would like to track your movements using satellite technology. Dill, a transportation researcher at Portland State University, wants to see how moderate cyclists use Portland city streets and bike paths in hopes of boosting the use of bikes as alternatives to cars.

The study also will help planners understand more about the value of bike lanes, a subject examined in a previous Dill study that showed the number of bike lanes within a quarter-mile of a person’s home had no bearing on the amount of cycling the person did.

The new study drills deeper using global positioning system units. During the past few months Dill has captured the movements of more avid cyclists, issuing 130 of them GPS units to carry on trips around the city. Advertisement After it’s analyzed, Dill hopes the data will help show city bike planners where to locate bike paths, bike lanes and directional signs to help riders find their way.

In this second phase of the GPS research, Dill wants to get a snapshot of the routes that less-frequent cyclists use to get from place to place. For this phase of the study she’s looking for cyclists who are at least 18 years old, live within the Portland-area urban growth boundary and don’t ride bikes for a living.

She’ll choose just one volunteer per household. Dill shares a cozy office with her Breezer Uptown 8, a purple commuting machine that she often rides to work at Portland State University’s Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning. If it were up to her, a lot more people would share offices with their bikes.

Dill says the locators will fill in crucial gaps in knowledge she has gained about bicycle use from telephone surveys of 566 Portland-area residents. The units record the rider’s location, speed and direction every three seconds. The volunteers carry a GPS device for a week, turning it on every time they climb on a bike.

Surveys are useful, Dill says. “But there’s only so much people can remember about their rides,” she says. With the GPS units, she says, “We’ll know how far and how fast they’re going.”