HMN 2025: How Protected bike lanes are linked to almost double the variety of bicycle commuters

Would commuters be extra more likely to journey a motorbike if they’d the choice to journey in a protected lane? New analysis led by a University of New Mexico School of Engineering college member says sure.

Protected bike lanes are related to almost double the variety of bike ridership than normal bike lanes, in accordance with a brand new paper published in Nature Cities.

The paper, titled “The hyperlink between low-stress bicycle amenities and bicycle commuting,” stories that protected bike lanes see about 1.8 instances the variety of bike commuters than normal bike lanes do and 4.3 instances as many as blocks with out bike lanes.

UNM’s Nick Ferenchak, affiliate professor of civil, development and environmental engineering and director of the Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety, led the analysis. Wesley Marshall, professor of civil engineering on the University of Colorado at Denver, co-authored the paper.

The researchers examined six years of longitudinal information throughout 14,011 blocks in 28 U.S. cities to make the willpower.

“Cities that search to spice up bicycle commute mode shifts ought to deal with implementing low-stress bicycle amenities in the event that they wish to finest facilitate the sizable inhabitants of less-confident potential riders,” Ferenchak mentioned.

According to Ferenchak, the outcomes will be interpreted as validation of the stress-based planning instrument often called Bicycle Level of Traffic Stress. Civil engineers use instruments like this to assist decide what road infrastructure is appropriate for bicyclists of various ages and {experience} ranges. The much less tense an space is to bike journey in, the extra folks will put it to use.

To examine the various kinds of bicycle amenities, or lane types, Ferenchak and Marshall first checked out cities with greater than double the nationwide common of bicycle commute mode share utilizing the American Community Survey 5-year estimates. Fourteen cities with excessive ranges of bicycle commuting had been paired with cities of comparable inhabitants measurement, geographic space, local weather and performance which have considerably decrease ranges of bicycle commuters.

In order to finish the evaluation, they used historic bicycle maps, interviewed metropolis staff, and examined historic pictures from Google Earth and Google Street View. Then, they categorized teams of road blocks by sort of bicycle infrastructure and mileage of every sort.

Researchers discovered that whereas normal bike lanes improve the variety of bicycle commuters in comparison with streets with no bike infrastructure, protected bike lanes and buffered bike lanes encourage even larger numbers of bicycle commuters. While a larger variety of bicycle commuters might not be a metropolis’s major finish objective, it might assist decrease gasoline consumption, emissions, and transportation prices whereas producing higher well being outcomes and larger security for bicyclists.