A GIS-based cycling path planning in Singapore: A case study of Woodlands Planning Area

Abstract

Singapore introduced the National Cycling Plan to increase cycling infrastructure 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 optimal planning outcomes and greater transparency in planning, multiple criteria and the perspectives of different stakeholders need to be considered. This thesis proposes a Geographic Information System-based multi-criteria decision analysis (GIS-MCDA) framework for the planning of cycling paths 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 path planning support framework will be implemented for Woodlands Planning Area (WPA). The primary research questions are where to build cycling paths in WPA and whether the cycling paths to be built will change based on different stakeholders’ preferences. Questionnaires are conducted to obtain the views of the public, transport experts and government planners on the relative importance of nine criteria in the planning of cycling paths. The nine criterion raster layers are combined according to their relative importance to each stakeholder using the Weighted Linear Combination model. The results show the areas where new cycling paths should be prioritised in WPA and demonstrate that the existing cycling network in WPA is inadequate. Furthermore, cycling paths preferred by the government planner and public are largely similar, whereas the paths prefered by the transport expert differ slightly. The cycling path planning support framework is able to visualise different stakeholders’ preferences and model various scenarios, hence can improve the engagement between stakeholders and contribute to greater transparency in Singapore’s planning processes. The framework has the potential to be applied to other planning problems.