Cycling on rural highways presents comfort and safety concerns due to the large speed differentials between bicyclists and automobiles. A shortcoming of the current operational methods for rural highways is the limited consideration of quality of service for non-motorized users. This research aims to determine which variables are most relevant to bicyclists cycling (or not) on rural highways and their operational cycling preferences. An online survey collected 982 responses from individuals who cycle on rural highways in the United States. Eight choice tasks were presented with six factors: pavement quality, automobile traffic level, posted speed limit, roadside design, context class, and grade. These factors were obtained from a preliminary survey targeting highway analysis and design practitioners. The results of a mixed-logit model analysis suggest that the presence of a shoulder and its width are the most critical factors to a cyclist’s perceived quality of service on a rural highway. We found that the difference between rural-town and suburban contexts was minor compared to rural contexts. The results demonstrate how cyclist types influence their overall willingness to cycle and their preferences for scenario-specific attributes. This opens the discussion to include different sets of thresholds to assess service levels as a function of cyclist type, following the level of traffic stress approach, and separate perception models by cyclist type. These results should inform recommendations for future research on improving existing evaluations related to bicycling on rural highways.

由于骑自行车的人和汽车之间的速度差异很大，因此在乡村高速公路上骑自行车会带来舒适性和安全问题。目前农村公路运营方式的一个缺点是对非机动用户服务质量的考虑有限。本研究旨在确定哪些变量与在乡村高速公路上骑自行车（或不骑自行车）的骑自行车者及其运营骑行偏好最相关。一项在线调查收集了 982 份来自在美国农村高速公路上骑自行车的人的回复。八项选择任务与六个因素一起提出：路面质量、汽车交通水平、张贴的限速、路边设计、环境类别和坡度。这些因素是从针对公路分析和设计从业者的初步调查中获得的。混合 logit 模型分析的结果表明，路肩的存在及其宽度是影响骑行者在乡村高速公路上感知服务质量的最关键因素。我们发现，与农村环境相比，农村城镇和郊区环境之间的差异很小。结果展示了骑行者类型如何影响他们的整体骑行意愿以及他们对场景特定属性的偏好。这开启了讨论，包括不同的阈值集，以评估服务水平作为骑行者类型的函数，遵循交通压力水平方法，并按骑行者类型分离感知模型。这些结果为未来研究提供建议，以改进与农村公路骑自行车相关的现有评估。