On May 3rd at 9:00 am, Dr. Tim Reuter (RBB Economics) will give a guest lecture on "Platform economics in practice: hotel booking portals and best price clauses" as part of the seminar on platform economics. All interested parties are welcome to attend. Please register at Sekretariat.verkehrswissenschaft@uni-muenster.de.

Language of presentation: German

On March 22, 2024, a guest lecture by chief police inspector Miriam Jablonski on "Cycling in Münster:  Setting individual priorities in the context of traffic monitoring" will take place as part of the Research Seminar on Analyzing Bicycle Traffic Data with R by Dr. Jan Wessel. All interested parties are welcome to attend.

Language of presentation: German

In their new article "More Afraid of the Virus than of Bad Weather? Exploring the link between Weather Conditions and Cycling Volume in German Cities Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic", Ansgar Hudde and Jan Wessel examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the relationship between weather and cycling. Based on data from 69 automated bicycle counting stations in Germany, the authors show that the weather sensitivity of cyclists in transit-oriented cities has increased during the Covid-19 pandemic. One reason for this could be that public transport users have switched to cycling due to the increased risk of infection on public transport and that these new cyclists are significantly more sensitive to the weather than long-time cyclists. In more bicycle-oriented (student) cities, on the other hand, the weather sensitivity of cyclists has not changed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This article is published in the journal Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour (link to article).

Increasing cycling attractiveness is essential for city planners to enable more sustainable mobility. One way to improve cycling quality is to reduce the frequency of stopping, thereby enhancing cycling flow. Against this backdrop, the city of Münster installed an open-source green wave assistant designed specifically for cyclists, located 110 meters in front of the traffic lights.

In their new article "Riding the Green Wave - How Countdown Timers at Bicycle Traffic Lights Impact on Cycling Behavior", Christina Brand, Thomas Hagedorn, Till Kösters, Marlena Meier, Gernot Sieg and Jan Wesse analyze the impact of the Leezenflow system. Therefore, they conduct a natural field experiment in real traffic and an online survey. This is the first comprehensive analysis of a bicycle green wave assistant, considering both its long-term impact in real traffic and user feedback. They find that the number of cyclists that have to stop at the red lights decreases by 6.6 %. Moroever, the data indicates a reported increase in cycling quality, and evidence for positive effects on traffic safety.

This article is published at the journal Travel Behavior and Society (Link to article).