Abstract
All ages and abilities (AAA) cycling networks are critical to providing accessible and equitable physical activity opportunities. However, cities experience many challenges to implementing cycling infrastructure, including insufficient funding and a lack of evidence on how to best increase implementation efforts. The purpose of this comparative case study was to explore the implementation of AAA cycling infrastructure in two Canadian cities: Guelph, Ontario and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Alongside city partners, CapaCITY/É, a research partnership working to mobilize sustainable transportation interventions and implementation across Canadian cities, selected cases to demonstrate the complexities of implementing AAA cycling infrastructure. Document scans were used to obtain in-depth information relating to the general process of implementing AAA cycling infrastructure and equity considerations. City websites and Google were searched broadly to identify documents (e.g., municipal documents, legal documents, news reports) pertaining to case implementation. A total of 158 and 64 documents were identified for the Guelph and Halifax cases, respectively. Preliminary results suggest that both cities face significant barriers to the implementation of AAA cycling infrastructure, including accessibility concerns and network and topographical limitations. Further, equity considerations are made inconsistently across municipalities when developing and implementing AAA infrastructure; Halifax had more mentions of equity than Guelph. An improved understanding of the factors that influence AAA cycling infrastructure implementation and how equity is considered can guide practitioners in planning and advocating for more AAA cycling networks and more equitable cycling – and thus physical activity - infrastructure in the future.
