Active travel (AT) delivers a range of societal and health benefits, including reductions in air
pollution, noise and greenhouse gas emissions from road traffic (Chapman et al., 2018), as
well as improvements in mental health and cardiovascular health (Oja et al., 2011, Vardoulakis
and Kinney, 2019). At the same time, concerns remain around safety risks linked to poorly
designed infrastructure such as cycleways (Pearson et al., 2022a). The provision of
accessible, high-quality walking and cycling infrastructure is therefore widely recognised as
critical to enabling safe AT and, in some cases, decisive in determining AT uptake (Pearson
et al., 2022b, Lawlor et al., 2022).
Building on the established link between infrastructure provision and AT uptake (Jahanshahi
et al., 2021), this paper examines how a newly constructed cycleway influences travel
behaviour, with a focus on the specific infrastructure features that support or hinder use.
Drawing on walking and cycling counts, an online survey of users, and a focus group with non
users, we analyse AT behaviours at both individual and societal levels. The case study centres
on the Moore Park Road pop-up cycleway (MPC) in Sydney, Australia. Two questions guide
this research: (i) What AT behaviours and behaviour changes have been observed at the
MPC? (ii) How do the characteristics of the MPC infrastructure shape its use?
