Adult beginner cyclists in French cities. Characterizing their profiles and their bike-use persistence with a two-wave panel survey
Résumé
This paper focuses on the question of adult beginner cyclists (ABCs) in French cities. In other words, the profile identified and described here concerns people cycling for utility purposes on a rather regular basis but with low cycling skills. With the help of an analysis based on two waves of a panel-survey (2018 and 2019, n=1 113) ABCs are estimated between 1,8% to 3% of French urban population, or in absolute terms between 600 000 and a million cyclists. A second key result shows that almost two ABCs out of three (65%) abandon cycling during the year, which makes it a very vulnerable category of cyclists. These figures could make ABCs a subject of great interest for mobility policies and cycling associations, and opens new tracks for research on transitions to utility cycling.