hiBike Release: New Greenness, Detours, and Summary Features for Improved Bikeability Analysis

  • Climate Action
The Climate Action Navigator now includes also greenness, detours, and extended summary statistics in its bikeability assessments. The latest release of hiBike makes it easier to identify strengths and weaknesses in the cycling infrastructure of cities worldwide.
Person wearing a backpack riding a bicycle on a tree-lined path with sunlight filtering through.

Assess Bikeability with hiBike

hiBike is a key assessment tool of the Climate Action Navigator (CAN) for analyzing the bikeability of cities and towns. It evaluates how bike-friendly the urban street infrastructure is by using indicators co-developed with real-life users like the Radlobby Austria.

We have now released a new version of hiBike, which adds two new indicators (Greenness and Detour Factors) to the preexistent ones (Bikeable Path Categories, Dooring Risk, Path Smoothness, and Surface Types). Moreover, we have extended the summary statistics to provide more actionable information for stakeholders such as NGOs, city administrations, and citizens’ initiatives to identify strengths and gaps in the cycling infrastructure of their cities.

Greenness: How Much Greenery Is There on My Cycling Path?

Cycling is generally more enjoyable when there is vegetation (such as trees or parks) or water (such as a river or pond) nearby. We take this into account by adding a “greenness” indicator to our bikeability assessment tool. The new greenness indicator aggregates the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to show vegetation presence within a small buffer around bikeable paths. This feature enables users to identify areas where greenness enhances comfort or where it may be lacking.

Map of Tirana showing varying levels of path greenness with a gradient from low to high indicated in green.
Path Greenness in Tirana, Albania. Greenness scores each path based on the presence of vegetation within 15 m from the center of a path or road. The majority of roads in Tirana show low greenness scores.

Detour Factors: Can I Take the Shortest Route to My Destination?

When cycling to a desired destination, we generally wish to take the shortest route, avoiding lengthy detours as much as possible. Detour factors highlight areas where a long detour is necessary or reaching a neighboring cell is impossible for cyclists. The latter case indicates that the cycling infrastructure is missing (or that it is not mapped). For city planners and advocacy groups, such insights are essential for identifying structural barriers and prioritizing interventions.

Map of Cuxhaven area showing detour factors with large sections marked as unreachable and high detour in dark red and orange.
Detour Factors in Cuxhaven, Germany. Detour factors measure how directly you can bike to surrounding locations. “Medium Detour” means that it takes on average twice the straight-line distance to reach the neighbouring cells. “High Detour” means that it takes on average three times the straight-line distance to reach the neighbouring cells. “Unreachable” means that at least one neighbouring cell cannot be reached or the cell does not contain paths. Cells with a detour factor below 2 are not displayed on the map, as they are considered to have good connectivity and are thus not problematic.

Summaries: Strengthening Data Transparency and Quality

The new hiBike version introduces extended summary statistics that give more detailed information on the percentage of paths in each category, including path-sharing characteristics, surface quality, and greenness. Except for greenness, all these summaries function as a data quality check, helping users understand how well cycling infrastructure is mapped in their area of interest. The greenness summary provides the user with a handy overview of the overall greenness of the selected area.

Map of Heidelberg area with a bar chart showing distribution of path categories by percentage of total path length.
Distribution of Path Categories in Heidelberg, Germany. This diagram shows the total length of paths in Heidelberg distributed across the different path categories.

The Climate Action Navigator

The current enhancements to hiBike are part of a broader development of the Climate Action Navigator, which already delivers high-resolution assessments on climate-relevant topics such as urban walkability, cities´ CO2 budgets, residential heating emissions, land consumption, and emissions linked to land use changes.

Whenever possible, CAN uses freely accessible data (like OpenStreetMap and satellite imagery) and open software tools, thereby ensuring accessibility, broad applicability, and adaption opportunities. CAN´s assessment tools aim to help stakeholders identify both strengths and gaps in climate mitigation across sectors. By visualizing data at street-level resolution, interventions and improvements can be targeted and consider the specific local context.

Assess how your city or district is doing with the Climate Action Navigator: https://climate-action.heigit.org/webapp/dashboard

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