GIS-MCDA based cycling paths planning: a case study in Singapore

Cycling has been recognized as one of the solutions to urban transportation challenges. In 2013, Singapore has announced the National Cycling Plan to significantly increase the cycling infrastructure and promote cycling across the entire country by 2030. Given Singapore's land constraints, planning the most effective cycling network is critical. Moreover, there has been growing pressure to incorporate public participation in planning decisions. In order to achieve ideal planning outcomes and greater transparency in planning, multiple criteria and the perspectives of different stakeholders need to be considered. This paper proposes a Geographical Information System-based multi-criteria decision analysis (GIS-MCDA) framework for the support of cycling paths planning in Singapore. It is positioned to address the lacuna in the literature that is dominated by western-centric case studies and a fixation on only infrastructural and objective factors in the planning of cycling paths. The proposed cycling paths planning support framework will be implemented in Woodlands Planning Area (WPA). The primary research questions are about where to build cycling paths in WPA and whether/how the cycling paths to be built will change based on different stakeholders’ preferences. The cycling paths planning support framework is able to incorporate different stakeholders’ preferences into various scenarios, hence can improve the engagement between stakeholders and contribute to greater transparency in Singapore's cycling paths planning. The limitations and further applications of the framework is also discussed.