A Planning Practice Method to Assess the Potential for Cycling and to Design a Bicycle Network in a Starter Cycling City in Portugal
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Great study, very well described in the article.
It would be great if you could think about involving also dynamic parameters in the study, at a next stage, and in a way in particular simulations: passenger dynamics, walking routes and their use intensity.
Maybe you can mention in 1 sentence in the current article that this would bring an additional value regarding the forecast precision etc., and you are envisaging to implement such dynamic factor simulations at a latter stage.
Highly interested to collaborate on novel mobility integration issues.
Author Response
Author's response letter to Reviewer 1
The authors would like to thank the Reviewer for the positive comments and suggestions that have helped us to improve the overall quality of the manuscript. The manuscript was submitted to a major revision. We analysed carefully the comments and suggestions done by the four Reviewers and revised our paper accordingly. The changes done can be checked in the pdf file: the new added text is highlighted in green; the corrected text is in blue. Here is a point-by-point response to the comments and concerns of Reviewer 1. Thank you.
Reviewer 1
Great study, very well described in the article.
It would be great if you could think about involving also dynamic parameters in the study, at a next stage, and in a way in particular simulations: passenger dynamics, walking routes and their use intensity.
Maybe you can mention in 1 sentence in the current article that this would bring an additional value regarding the forecast precision etc., and you are envisaging to implement such dynamic factor simulations at a latter stage.
Highly interested to collaborate on novel mobility integration issues.
Author’s response:
Thank you for the positive review and kind words about the work described in this manuscript. We agree with this suggestion and included a new paragraph about future works in the end of the Discussion. The new paragraph is as follows: “Therefore, there is room for improvement in future studies. A valuable future contribution would be to track the adoption and the success of the described planning actions by measuring the growth in cycling share in Ponte de Lima. Approaching tar-get stakeholders (planners and decision-makers) and surveying the population will be helpful for understanding and incorporating their points of view in bicycle planning practices. To obtain more robust cycling data and a dynamic overview of cycling, bicycles equipped with a GPS could be used for monitoring the usage levels and the specific paths chosen by cyclists between specific origins and destinations in the next stages of the work. We plan to study these issues in future work.”
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper entitled “A planning practice method to assess the potential for cycling and design a bicycle network in a starter cycling city in Portugal” presents a comprehensive case study of a Portuguese city of Ponte de Lima in terms of its potential for cycling under the current poor situation of bicycle use for daily commuting. However, the uniqueness of this paper lies into fact that based on their research the authors have suggested bicycle-friendly measures the implementation of which may help create a bicycle network in the city under study that would be a safe, comfortable, attractive and cohesive for cycling. There is no doubt that this paper is an excellent work so far as its originality is concerned, and hence it will be useful for not only researchers and policy makers but also the other stakeholders including the daily commuters who find bicycle as an alternate mode of transportation within the defined city area. This kind of research paper must be welcomed as it reflects the seriousness on the part of authors to make their worthy contribution to the academic world as well as the society at large.
Author Response
Author's response letter to Reviewer 2
The authors would like to thank the Reviewer for the positive comments and suggestions that have helped us to improve the overall quality of the manuscript. The manuscript was submitted to a major revision. We analysed carefully the comments and suggestions done by the four Reviewers and revised our paper accordingly. The changes done can be checked in the pdf file: the new added text is highlighted in green; the corrected text is in blue. Here is a point-by-point response to the comments and concerns of Reviewer 2. Thank you.
Reviewer 2:
The paper entitled “A planning practice method to assess the potential for cycling and design a bicycle network in a starter cycling city in Portugal” presents a comprehensive case study of a Portuguese city of Ponte de Lima in terms of its potential for cycling under the current poor situation of bicycle use for daily commuting. However, the uniqueness of this paper lies into fact that based on their research the authors have suggested bicycle-friendly measures the implementation of which may help create a bicycle network in the city under study that would be a safe, comfortable, attractive and cohesive for cycling. There is no doubt that this paper is an excellent work so far as its originality is concerned, and hence it will be useful for not only researchers and policy makers but also the other stakeholders including the daily commuters who find bicycle as an alternate mode of transportation within the defined city area. This kind of research paper must be welcomed as it reflects the seriousness on the part of authors to make their worthy contribution to the academic world as well as the society at large.
Author’s response:
The authors would like to thank the Reviewer for him/her positive evaluation and for classifying this paper as an excellent work. Thank you so much for your kind words.
Reviewer 3 Report
I read the paper with interest. However, I find that, in its present form, it needs some major revisions before being published. My detailed comments follow.
My main concern is kind of conceptual and it reflects directly in the proposed application. Although the choice of Ponte de Lima as a case study is in fact explained and justified, in the end this town seems to be completely unsuitable for developing biking. In addition, as admitted in the paper, the population living in and commuting to Ponte de Lima and the municipality decision makers were not involved in the study. Therefore, I wonder what is the interest in the case study itself. I think this should be explained much more thoroughly and the value added of the work should be highlighted much more clearly.
Minor points
Line 11 plus lines 44-45and 53: what are those percentages? The share of people using a bike on a daily basis? This should be clarified.
Line 52: classified as “starters” by who? Although a reference is provided, I feel the text should be made self-explanatory.
Author Response
Author's response letter to Reviewer 3
The authors would like to thank the Reviewer for the positive comments and suggestions that have helped us to improve the overall quality of the manuscript. The manuscript was submitted to a major revision. We analysed carefully the comments and suggestions done by the four Reviewers and revised our paper accordingly. The changes done can be checked in the pdf file: the new added text is highlighted in green; the corrected text is in blue. Here is a point-by-point response to the comments and concerns of Reviewer 3. Thank you.
Reviewer 3:
I read the paper with interest. However, I find that, in its present form, it needs some major revisions before being published. My detailed comments follow.
My main concern is kind of conceptual and it reflects directly in the proposed application. Although the choice of Ponte de Lima as a case study is in fact explained and justified, in the end this town seems to be completely unsuitable for developing biking. In addition, as admitted in the paper, the population living in and commuting to Ponte de Lima and the municipality decision makers were not involved in the study. Therefore, I wonder what is the interest in the case study itself. I think this should be explained much more thoroughly and the value added of the work should be highlighted much more clearly.
Author’s response:
We understand these concerns, but there are conditions to make Ponte de Lima more bike-friendly and to learn with this case study. In our view, Ponte de Lima is not “completely unsuitable for developing biking”. As a starter city, Ponte de Lima face particular challenges given the incipient cycling infrastructure, topographic conditions and low proportion of young population; but as also highlighted in the manuscript, the city is compact, the main destinations are up to 3 km distance and streets are relatively well integrated, which makes cycling convenient. Therefore, to facilitate the implementation of cycling, the city needs specific planning support for mitigating the problems and fostering the strengths, which is one of the main purposes of this work. It is true that decision makers and the population in general was not actively involved in this study. However, as stated in the end of the Discussion, our intention is to evaluate and measure the growth in cycling share in Ponte de Lima in future studies. This could be a good opportunity for analyzing the public perceptions about cycling in the city.
The case study itself can be seen as an endeavor to address the gap in planning support tools for starter cycling cities. For planners and decision-makers, this paper provides comprehensive information on various measures for cycling promotion in starter cities. With this case study, we tried to provide practical know-how and an initial spatial approach to address the specific problems and needs of this city that can lead to the development of more effective strategies for cycling promotion. As now emphasised in the document, the described planning approach can be used to support future planning decisions, to prioritize cycling investments and has potential to help the city in reaching the goal of the National Strategy for Active Mobility (to have a bicycle modal share of 10% by 2030). We believe that this approach can also be easily adapted and replicable in other starter cycling cities with incipient cycling infrastructure and limited technical know-how in cycling planning. As recommended we detailed much more the contribution and value added of the approach thoroughly the paper, namely in the: Introduction (last paragraph); Methodology (last paragraph of 3.1); Discussion (second paragraph) and Conclusion (last paragraph). Please check. Thank you.
Reviewer 4 Report
Even though this kind of research is not very novel but is important as it helps authorities to decide on planning and design a bicycle network as well as polices in a city like Ponte de Lima. There are several minor linguistic and writing errors e.g. in Line 51, 592 which should be corrected. It looks indicators/lines in the map are fine but double check them before publishing!
Author Response
Author's response letter to Reviewer 4
The authors would like to thank the Reviewer for the positive comments and suggestions that have helped us to improve the overall quality of the manuscript. The manuscript was submitted to a major revision. We analysed carefully the comments and suggestions done by the four Reviewers and revised our paper accordingly. The changes done can be checked in the pdf file: the new added text is highlighted in green; the corrected text is in blue. Here is a point-by-point response to the comments and concerns of Reviewer 4. Thank you.
Reviewer 4:
Even though this kind of research is not very novel but is important as it helps authorities to decide on planning and design a bicycle network as well as polices in a city like Ponte de Lima. There are several minor linguistic and writing errors e.g. in Line 51, 592 which should be corrected. It looks indicators/lines in the map are fine but double check them before publishing!
Author’s response:
Thank you for the positive review and kind words about the work described in this manuscript. We also appreciated the reviewer for identifying linguistic and writing errors in the text, the words/expressions were modified as suggested. In addition, the full document, including the text in maps, was checked and corrected by native English speakers. Please check the pdf with the track changes (blue text) and the proofreading attached.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
In the document I could download the changes were not marked anyhow (not in green nor in blue, as mentioned by the authors in their reply). If the authors fully included what they explained to me in the reply, I think the article can be accepted.
