Cyclists route choice modeling from trip duration data in urban areas

The lack of GPS data limits the ability to reconstruct the actual routes taken by cyclists in urban areas. This article introduces an inference method based solely on trip durations and origin-destination pairs from bike-sharing system (BSS) users. Travel time distributions are modeled using log-normal mixture models, allowing us to identify the presence of distinct behaviors. The approach is applied to 3.8 million trips recorded in 2022 in the Toulouse metropolitan area, with observed durations compared against travel times estimated by OpenStreetMap (OSM). Results show that, for many station pairs, trip durations align closely with the fastest route suggested by OSM, reflecting a dominant and routine practice. In other cases, mixture models reveal more heterogeneous behaviors, including longer trips, detours, or intermediate stops. This approach highlights both the stability and diversity of cycling practices, providing a robust tool for usage analysis in data-limited contexts, and offering new insights into urban mobility dynamics without relying on spatially explicit data.