Feasibility Study for a Web-based Routable Bicycle Trip Planner for the San Francisco Bay Area

New web-mapping technologies, such as ESRI ArcGIS Server, and web page user interface frameworks, such as EXT-JS, hold the promise of supporting rapid development of rich Internet mapping applications. Network analysis functionality integrated in ArcGIS Server introduces the possibility for building a routable bicycle trip planner. However, network routing for bicycles differs from that of automobiles. Commercial street network databases coded for automobile routing cannot perform bicycle routing without modification. This thesis documents a feasibility study undertaken from 2005 to 2010 to create a bicycle trip planner application for San Francisco, California. It describes the design of a network database customized for bicycle routing, a review of functionality of other web-based bicycle trip planners, a requirement analysis, and a functional user interface design. The results of the feasibility study are analyzed and the success of the effort is measured by reviewing organizational response and public user feedback received after a beta launch of the routable bicycle trip planner