ITS Monday: Edition 26, 2026

Data-driven empirical evaluation of shared spaces using crowdsourced vehicle data: Evidence from New South Wales, Australia

The first of a few new academic papers in this week’s ITS Monday. The co-authors are Kasun Wijayaratna and Gregory Aouad, and the abstract is:

Shared spaces have been proposed and implemented as a means of supporting safe and sustainable road networks by reducing the prominence of vehicles and defining places for people. However, empirical evidence on their performance remains limited, particularly in the Australian context. This paper presents a before-and-after empirical evaluation of three shared space applications in New South Wales, Australia.

The implementations were delivered through the “Streets as Shared Spaces” program by local government authorities with support from the New South Wales Government. Each application was similar in scale but situated in different geographic and land-use contexts, representing lower-intensity shared space interventions within a broader spectrum of shared space design.

Crowdsourced vehicle performance data and routine administrative crash statistics informed the evaluation, directly addressing safety concerns highlighted in the existing literature. Changes in speed, acceleration and braking behaviour were initially assessed using descriptive before-and-after comparisons, while near-miss and crash records provided descriptive indicators of safety conditions. The speed data was further examined using a modified difference-in-differences (DiD) framework, with within-site pre-intervention conditions serving as the internal comparator and time-series diagnostics used to assess baseline stability.

The results suggest reductions in vehicle speeds across both shared space segments and surrounding links, with largely limited changes in acceleration and braking behaviour, aside from some variation near approach and exit segments to the shared space. Safety indicators show no clear deterioration in safety during the early post-implementation period, although longer-term monitoring is required. The findings are indicative and case specific rather than causal but illustrate how connected vehicle data can support scalable and transferable monitoring of place-based street interventions.

Related iMOVE projects:

• Understanding perceived safety and travel behaviour in shared spaces
• Speed and safety evaluation of shared spaces in NSW
• Evaluation and implementation of shared spaces in NSW

Government announces e-bike crackdown, but sellers warn it won’t solve the real problem

“The Federal government has announced a plan to introduce strict new national safety standards for all mobility devices sold in Australia following a sharp rise in serious injuries and deaths related to e-bikes and e-scooters. However, the proposal has been met with opposition from NSW e-bike sellers who say the crackdown will harm their businesses without fixing the larger issues of illegal modifications and reckless riding.”

Pay-per-minute bike-sharing pricing strategy nudges cyclists toward unsafe behaviours: a bicycle simulator study

A new academic paper, co-authored by Federico Orsini , Andrea Baldassa , Mariaelena Tagliabue , Massimiliano Gastaldi , and Riccardo Rossi.

The abstract:

Pay-per-minute bike-sharing pricing strategies can act as a monetary incentive for cyclists to minimize their travel time, potentially leading to negative consequences for road safety. This study investigates the effects of time-based fees on bike-sharing users through a bicycle simulator experiment involving 30 participants (15 females, aged 19–28).

Participants rode along a path composed of roundabouts and unsignalized T-intersections under two experimental conditions presented in randomized order. In the Private Bike (PB) condition, participants were instructed to ride as they typically would in the real world. In the Bike Sharing (BS) condition, participants were informed that €0.06 would be deducted from their final payment for each minute of riding. Generalized Linear Mixed Models were employed to analyse the effects of the experimental condition on route choice at roundabouts (i.e., using the dedicated crosswalk versus riding within the roundabout ring), waiting time and crossing speed at crosswalks, riding speed on straight segments, and gap-acceptance behaviour at T-intersections.

In the BS condition, participants tended to wait less before crossing, rode faster, and accepted shorter time gaps. These findings raise concerns on pay-per-minute bike-sharing pricing strategies, which can significantly nudge cyclists toward unsafe behaviours, despite the very small size of the monetary incentive.

Related iMOVE articles:

• Micromobility: Info, Projects & Resources

A residential e-bicycle parking mismatch? Unpacking a neglected issue in cycling policy

A new academic paper, co0authored by Ugo Lachapelle, Patrick Rérat, and Emmanuel Ravalet.

The abstract:

To support bicycling, cities have focused on providing infrastructure to ensure safe movement. Much less research assesses the provision of adequate bicycle parking, especially residential parking. Because of their higher weight and costs, e-bicycles especially require safe, sheltered and accessible parking.

The paper describes the features of home-based bicycle parking for Swiss individuals with and without e-bicycles and assesses variations and discrepancies in residential bicycle parking availability and e-bicycle ownership across land use and household characteristics.
The 2021 Swiss Mobility and Transport Microcensus (MTMC) provides a representative national sample of data on e-bicycle ownership and residential bicycle parking (n = 10,154). Variations in logit-based estimated probabilities of e-bicycle ownership and quality parking access across predictor variables are assessed.

The probability of having accessible sheltered and secured bicycle parking in a locked room, the golden standard of safety, protection from the elements and ease of use, is low and below that of e-bicycle ownership probabilities, regardless of socio-demographics and location features. Across group characteristics, specific mismatches between parking access and e-bicycle ownership are identified. The largest mismatches are found for homeowners and residents of areas poorly served by public transit. Current housing stock is ill-equipped for parking of e-bicycles, especially in areas where regular cycling is historically low.

While existing standards can help shape new housing stock, retrofitting existing residential buildings is an important policy challenge. On street veloboxes may be more feasible. The variety of observed bicycle parking forms also points to the limits of current survey instruments. Improvements to survey instruments are proposed.

Brussels is about to lose most of its shared mobility fleet overnight — but not the part everyone hoped would go first.

This is a post on the LinkedIn profile of Dagmara Wrzesinska. “The dust is settling over the fact that soon, Brussels – where bike theft problem is widespread, will become a capital city without any DECENT bike-sharing service. Villo! – Brussels’ 17-year-old docked bike-share system, was heading for a contractual cliff-edge on 16th September 2026, with no replacement in sight. In the last few days, the Brussels government quietly extended the JCDecaux concession through September 2028.”

In European Shared Mobility, E-Bikes Have Emerged as the Winner, While E-Scooters May Never Make a Comeback

Another article post on LinkedIn, this one writerm by An Kiki from OMNI IoT. “Electric bikes have established themselves as the dominant mode of shared mobility in Europe, while shared electric scooters have been permanently marginalized due to early public perception failures. To date, no European city has successfully reinstated shared e-scooter services after imposing a ban.”