Boston has set a goal to have every resident within 3 minutes of a protected bike route. Progress since 2021 has shown and increase in ridership with more and more people interviewed saying they’re opting for their bike instead of car. Ridership increases are attributed to increased sense of safety while riding.

Cedar Rapids, IA implemented a road diet on four different roads that reduced the number of lanes of traffic. Using pre/post data, researchers found that there was no difference in emergency response times. Over half the EMS respondents in the follow up survey said the changes had either no impact or a positive impact on response times.

Protected bike lanes provide significant traffic calming in the form of max car speed reductions.

Meta review of years of bike lane and business research. Concludes that bike lanes are often good for business but occasionally have no impact. The doom and gloom to business that some may predict, however, isn’t justified.

NYC DOT added 3.18 miles of protected bike lanes in East NY, Brooklyn. The subsequent traffic calming and shortened crossing distance reduced death and serious injuries for all road users (that’s drivers included) by 18.1%. For senior pedestrians the decline was 39%!

Indiana’s Monon Trail is a “rail to trail” conversion that was very good for nearby property values. Homes within 1/2 mile of the trail sell for on average 11% more than those farther away.

Makes the safety, economic, and equity case for why so many cities are investing in bike infrastructure. Covers changes across 13 cities across the US. Discusses the impacts of protected bike networks specifically.

Studied business corridors that received street redesigns in 6 different cities. Business results were often positive, but in a few cases had no impact. Overall, food service and retail sales improve as does employment in those sectors. These results hold in cases where parking was removed for bike lanes.

From 2015 to 2019 FDNY response times were up 8.6%. In the annual NYC management report the fire department attributes the slower emergency response times to increased congestion, more cars on the road.

Covers the studies demonstrating retail sales, jobs, and property value gains from bike lanes. Pulls from over two dozen different sources for stats and quotes.

Covers University of Colorado research on safety benefits of protected bike lanes across 12 US metros.

As Copenhagen’s protected bike network grows, cyclists feel safer, and ridership grows. Government estimates are that each new protected route yields 15-20% more riders. From 2006 to 2016 there’s been a 22% increase in kilometres covered by bike (1.4 million km in 2016). Around 62% of commutes for those that live and work in Copenhagen are by bike.

Danish government estimates that 1 km of biking in Copenhagen creates 4.80 kroner (~ $1 per mile) in economic value. If that trip by bike replaced a car trip the economic value goes up to 10.09 kroner per km (~ $2.10 per mile). In 2017, 43% of work commutes in the city were taken by bike, so this value estimate is across a lot of kilometers of biking.

Crash data from Chicago 2011 - 2014 shows that streets with sharrows have increased cyclist injury rates. Cities would be better off not painting sharrows and leaving the street without any markings at all.

Seville, Spain built a full protected bike lane network and saw ridership increase > 400% and the risk of bike and car crashes decline > 60%. The share of total trips taken in the area went from near 0% by bike to almost 9%, a mode shift size that’s hard to overstate.