23 May 2025 |
Understanding Cyclist Perceptions and Cycling Vernacular in Singapore

by Wisely Ong (PhD Candidate, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, NUS and NUS Cities) and Hamzah Yaacob (Part-time researcher, NUS Cities)

In Singapore, cycling uptake remains abysmally low at around 3-4% of all daily trips despite prominent state efforts to promote "move-lite" and active mobility. Hence, we seek to uncover and understand cyclist perceptions and cycling vernacular, with the mainstream media as a starting point. Mainstream media in Singapore is an important source of information for Singaporeans, operating amidst a significantly regulated environment. It also tends to engender the state's narrative and discourse. Through a study of 123 news articles relating to cyclists or cycling over the last two years from The Straits Times and Channel News Asia, key words and phrases were systematically extracted and categorised into 3 meta-themes with various sub-themes. Both inductive and deductive coding were performed to reveal themes and ideas such as "road warrior" and "performative sportiness" through a literature review of recent scholarship on cycling attitudes in Asia and the West. In the next phase of the study, we will conduct focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews of cyclists and non-cyclists in Singapore to refine our analysis and tease out the everyday language of cycling vis-à-vis the state's narrative and that through mainstream media. In addition, we seek to conduct a broader ethnographic study of cycling experiences in the hopes of influencing both policy and public education towards cycling. As part of this talk, we will share our preliminary findings from our media analysis and completed ethnographic interviews, and an update on future work. This work has been accepted by the 9^th Cycling Research Board Annual Meeting to be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in September 2025.