[sustran] Re: Cycling in cities

[Todd Litman]

Cycling planners have long advocated the "Four 'Es'": Engineering,
Education, Enforcement and Encouragement. I believe that it is wrong to
emphasize just one strategy, such as bicycle skill training. Rather, it
deserves equal consideration with roadway design and the development of
special facilities, such as paths and lanes, where they are appropriate.

The concept adopted by North American bicycle planners is that bicycle
facilities should support, never contradict, standard roadway traffic
rules, such as slower traffic rides to the side of the roadway, and when
approaching intersections, vehicles (including bicycles) should choose
their position according to their destination. As a result, bicycle lanes
are usually positioned at the side of the roadway, with one-way cycling
traffic, and they sometimes discontinue through intersections, to encourage
cyclists to merge with traffic or to pull off onto the sidewalk and cross
as a pedestrian.

Where possible, mixed use paths can be built on abandoned railroad
rights-of-way, along rivers or waterfronts, and along freeway corridors,
that have relatively few roadway intersections. These have proven very
popular for both transportation and recreation cycling, and so are often a
worthwhile investment.

Another approach to developing urban cycling facilities is to develop a
network of bicycle arterials, where automobile traffic volumes and speeds
are minimized, and motorized traffic is for access only, not for through
travel. For example, about every fifth road in a street grid can be given
this treatment, with traffic calming and barriers that prevent through
automobile traffic every quarter-kilometer or so, but are open to cycling
and walking. Special care must be taken at intersections with major
artierials to safely accommodate nonmotorized crossings.

There is pretty good research indicating that poorly designed cycling
facilities, such as narrow sidewalk bicycle paths, increase the risk of
bicycle crashes, since they are crowded and do not indicate which user must
yield to other users. Forester and other critics of bicycle facilities have
used this to argue that no bicycle facilities should be built. However,
there is little evidence that well-designed bicycle facilities (bicycle
lanes and well-designed paths) increase crash risk, particularly with
regard to higher-risk injury crashes. (see discussion in 
Making Walking and Cycling Safer: Lessons from Europe, by John Pucher and
Lewis
Dijkstra (published in Transportation Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 3 at
http://www.vtpi.org/puchertq.pdf, and “Cycling Safety on Bikeways vs.
Roads,” by John Pucher, reply to John Forester’s Spring 2001 Transportation
Quarterly article “The Bikeway Controversy”, at
http://www.vtpi.org/puchertq2.pdf.

On the other hand, there is pretty good evidence that bicycle lanes and
paths encourage increased cycling. One study found that each mile of
bikeway per 100,000 residents increases bicycle commuting 0.075 percent,
all else being equal. (Arthur Nelson and David Allen, "If You Build Them,
Commuters Will Use Them; Cross-Sectional Analysis of Commuters and Bicycle
Facilities," Transportation Research Record 1578, 1997, pp. 79-83.) Bicycle
facilities and roadway improvements such as traffic calming are important
components of efforts to increase bicycle transportation.

For information on these issues see the various papers posted in the
"Pedestrian and Bicycle Issues" section of our website
(http://www.vtpi.org/0_nmt.htm), and the "Pedestrian and Bicycle Planning"
chapter of our Online TDM Encyclopedia (http://www.vtpi.org/tdm/tdm25.htm). 

Best wishes,
-Todd Litman


At 04:02 PM 5/14/02 +0800, you wrote:
>Good to hear all these ideas about urban cycling.
>
>1. I don't have a curriculum developed but there are probably other groups
>that have them -- the LAB has its effective cycling course but considering
>the emotional reaction against Effective Cycling expressed in this group
>which I don't really understand . . .
>2. I don't agree with how they've adopted the idea in Marikina is all I'm
>saying. I had that limited cycling experience in Amsterdam and there were
>times that I was confused about right of way, particularly at intersections.
>But if studies really show a greater accident rate on cycle paths along
>roadways, why shouldn't I be against them? The box and the traffic light
>timings seem to me mere compensations for the inherent deficiency of the
>facility.
>3) I have no idea about what the cycle paths in Colombia look like or their
>effect on cycling and MV traffic. This should be one area of fruitful
>scientific study -- how much of a factor are cycle paths/lanes in increasing
>cycling as against other possible factors? how much more cycling growth can
>be expected? what are cyclists reactions to the facilities as they be come
>more experienced in urban cycling? that said, I would love to see cycle ways
>along limited access highways or train tracks that could get me cross
>country in the same relative ease and convenience as car traffic (no stop
>lights, no public transport loading and unloading, no MVs weaving in and out
>of lanes). but in urban environments? Maybe in the most limited sense as
>already been pointed out -- if you need to get somewhere and don't need to
>stop anywhere else and that travel is served point-to-point by the cycle
>path, then great. that would be like a bike expressway. But who would
>actually build a bike expressway?
>4) Granted that the west side bikeway wasn't there yet when I was commuting
>from Brooklyn to the upper west side but there was certainly a multiple use
>path in Riverside Park. I used it for recreation and leisure riding, but
>used the streets for regular commuting. Instead of arguing about this, tho,
>it'd be interesting to actually see a study of travel time using these
>alternative "facilities."
>5) As I've said, I learned to cycle commute in NYC, which everybody says is
>one of the worst places to cycle. When I got back to Manila, I thought the
>road traffic situation was frightening compared to NYC and it took me a
>while to get used to the situation here. But now I commute fifteen km. each
>way everyday. Sometimes I take public transport and very rarely a car, but I
>like riding my old beat up commuter the best.
>6) Lastly, I've only recently read John Forester's ideas about effective
>cycling and they have only reinforced my experiences on road riding and how
>to do it safely.
>
>
>
>

Sincerely,

Todd Litman, Director
Victoria Transport Policy Institute
"Efficiency - Equity - Clarity"
1250 Rudlin Street
Victoria, BC, V8V 3R7, Canada
Phone & Fax: 250-360-1560
E-mail:  litman at vtpi.org
Website: http://www.vtpi.org