An article in The Journal of Transport and Land Use addresses the question of whether characteristics of walkable environments support bicycling. Despite the two often being combined into one non-motorized category, it asks the question because previous work has raised the issue that the two modes are functionally different.

The study performed a comprehensive review of literature on the built environment and bicycling, including mode choice, route choice, safety, and urban design literature.  Instead of focusing on bicycle infrastructure, as past studies have done, this study focused on the relationships between land use, urban form, and bicycling.

Researchers found that while highly walkable and highly bikeable environments are quite different, there is little consistency in the built-environment attributes associated with cycling across studies. They postulate that this inconsistency is in part due to a disconnect between theory and methods of measuring the environment for cycling along with data limitations, such as small sample sizes and the nature of cross-sectional data. The study recognizes that planning for cycling is now a top priority for many cities and regions around the world and concludes that further research of land-use planning policies that support cycling is needed.