Factors in the Design of a Bikeway Network in a Medium-Sized City: The Case of Tuluà in Colombia

This article presents a guideline for designing a bikeway network in a medium-sized city, taking into account key factors such as modal split, corridors along desire lines of travel connecting points of interest, the available public space, the investment possibilities of the city in the short term, and the benefit from segregating the bicycles from others vehicles. The guidelines are practical rules to define the shape of the network and the location of the bicycle lanes among different possible streets. Those guidelines were applied to Tuluá, a mediumsized city in Colombia (133.500 inhabitants in the urban zone) with 19% of trips by bicycle in 1997. A bikeway network was designed in the Master Plan of Highways and Transport 2000-2015 for the city, demonstrating that the bikeways could be a solution to mobility problems in medium-sized cities with appropriate conditions for the use of bicycles. A characterization of the main factors influencing the use of bicycle and the role of cycling in the total modal split are presented for this particular case.