A RESEARCH SERIES INVESTIGATING THE STATE OF CYCLING IN VANCOUVER THROUGH A RACIAL LENS

What motivates us to cycle? What barriers do we face? Are these motivators and barriers the same across all population groups? What is the link between cycling and our cultural, ethnic, or racial identity?

People are motivated to cycle for all kinds of reasons. While access to high-quality bike infrastructure usually results in higher cycling rates, many researchers in recent years have recognized that cyclists are not a generalizable, homogenous group. Cycling motivators and barriers are nuanced and unique to every individual and may differ based on various elements of our personal identity – including race^1,2,3,4,5. There is a prime opportunity to explore this further in Metro Vancouver given the region’s ethnoracial diversity.

Current projects

How accurate is visual perception? Assessing the ‘agreement’ between perceived and self-reported race of passing cyclists.

Student lead: Derek Yau, PhD candidate
Research period: Summer 2023 – Spring 2024

The lack of culture around collecting race-disaggregated cycling data in Vancouver – and broadly across Canada – results in informal and inconsistent data collection methods that have previously relied on visual perception. For example, visually perceiving a passing cyclist’s race has been used in recent, national data collection initiatives⁶; though, this method remains untested. Further, outside of the context of cycling research, a large body of literature already exists on the nuances of how racial recognition can be a function of one’s own social and cultural influences⁷. All of this raises the question of the accuracy and overall ‘appropriateness’ of using visual perception as a formal research method in collecting race-oriented data.

This research project aims to add to this conversation by investigating the overall accuracy of perceiving a passing cyclist’s race, and identifying and examining potential patterns in how their race is perceived by people of different ethnoracial and demographic backgrounds, themselves.

Thank you to all our data collectors and survey participants!
The study is now complete. Stay tuned for more details.

Future projects

Pedaling perspectives: Exploring intersectional barriers and motivators to cycling among ethnic Chinese in Vancouver.

Student lead: Derek Yau, PhD candidate
Research period: Winter – Fall 2024

More details to come! Watch this space!

1. Barajas JM. doi:10.1007/s11116-018-9955-7 ↩︎
2. Blickstein S, Brown C. Bicycling Among Black and Latino Women Focus Group Summary Report. Alan M Voorhees Transportation Center, Rutgers. Published online 2016. ↩︎
3. Lubitow A, Tompkins K, Feldman M. doi:10.1111/cico.12470 ↩︎
4. Roberts JD, Mandic S, Fryer CS, Brachman ML, Ray R. doi:10.3390/ijerph16081313 ↩︎
5. Steinbach R, Green J, Datta J, Edwards P. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.01.033 ↩︎
6. Winters et al. doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2023.101606 ↩︎
7. Young et al. doi.org/10.1177/1088868311418987 ↩︎