A GIS-Based Decision-Support Framework for Assessing Cycling Accessibility: Evidence from Burdur, Türkiye

Urban cycling is increasingly recognised as a key component of sustainable urban mobility, yet many medium-sized cities lack integrated analytical tools to support evidence-based cycling infrastructure planning. This study proposes a GIS-based decision-support framework integrating a relative cycling impedance (Bike Cost) model, GIS-based network analysis, Origin–Destination (OD) Cost Matrix analysis, frequency-based corridor identification, and sensitivity analysis to evaluate cycling accessibility and prioritise cycling investments. The framework was applied to the central district of Burdur, Türkiye, using neighbourhood centres as origins and primary schools, middle schools, high schools, the university, parks, and tourism destinations as six destination categories. The results reveal that Burdur’s compact urban structure provides relatively high cycling accessibility within the urban core. In contrast, peripheral neighbourhoods experience lower accessibility because of fragmented network connectivity and higher cycling impedance. Spatial comparison with the existing cycling infrastructure revealed that the identified high-priority corridors do not overlap with the current cycling network, highlighting a clear mismatch between existing infrastructure and the corridors of greatest strategic importance. Sensitivity analysis confirmed that the priority corridors remained highly stable under alternative Bike Cost weighting scenarios, demonstrating the robustness of the proposed framework. These findings indicate that improving network continuity and connectivity is as important as expanding cycling infrastructure. The proposed framework provides a transferable and reproducible methodology for supporting evidence-based cycling infrastructure planning and sustainable urban mobility in medium-sized cities.