Interdisciplenary research on bicycle highways.

In collaboration with the Province of Antwerp, the Design Sciences Hub, together with the Departments of Urban Planning and Spatial Planning, and Product Development, will conduct research on bicycle highways. The project's objective is to map people's experiences and formulate design guidelines for future projects. The Province of Antwerp actively promotes an increase in bicycle kilometers and the number of bicycle journeys, for example, through the expansion of bicycle routes and infrastructure in the form of bicycle highways. Some bicycle highways experience very intense usage and are approaching saturation. This leads to a loss of comfort and inconvenience for certain user groups. In this project, we will first investigate how, through small interventions, we can ensure safety, user-friendliness, and efficiency for different target groups. Subsequently, we will translate the insights gained about target groups into guidelines for the further development of existing bicycle networks and the establishment of new connections. This way, the Province of Antwerp can develop safe and user-friendly bicycle infrastructure to address transportation poverty in rural areas in a forward-looking manner and continue to work on resilient villages.