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Wednesday, August 27, 2014

The Cities That Spend The Most On Bike Lanes Later Reap The Most Reward

Investing in a network of fully separated bike lanes could save cities huge sums in the long-term. But too little investment in wimpy infrastructure could actually decrease enthusiasm for cycling.


For every dollar spent to build new separated bike lanes, cities could save as much as $24 thanks to lower health care costs and less pollution and traffic, according to a new study from researchers in New Zealand.

"At the moment in most car-dominated cities, it’s easy to justify spending transport money on new roads as a response to increasing car use, despite the negative impacts this has on the environment and people’s health now and in the future," says lead authorAlexandra Macmillan. "We wanted to explore some policy choices that were realistic, affordable, transformative and healthy."

While there's already research backing up the facts that biking makes us happier,more energetic, better able to concentrate, less fat, and generally healthier--and that bike lanes make more people ride, and even boost local business--this study may be the first to look at how different types of bike infrastructure investments pay cities back later.

The researchers looked at Auckland, New Zealand, which is currently not a particularly bike-friendly place, and used computer simulations to model different scenarios for new bike-related investments, including regular bike lanes, lanes shared with buses, and fully separated lanes.
They found huge differences: If the city built a network of separated lanes and slowed down traffic speeds, it could increase cycling by 40% by 2040, but adding a few lanes in a few places might only increase bike traffic by 5%. The more people ride, the more the cost savings would add up for Auckland--the biggest factor being a reduction in health care costs. A smaller investment would have little impact at all; the city is so bike-unfriendly that major changes are needed.

In cities dominated by cars, a small increase in cycling tends to lead to more biking injuries and deaths, making other people more afraid to ride. The way to overcome that problem, the researchers found, is to make a bigger commitment to better bike lanes.
"We found that significant infrastructure investment is needed to overcome this dampening effect of fears about cycling safety; that high quality changes to main roads and local streets are the best place to start for cities with low cycling and high car use; and that these investments can have benefits an order of magnitude greater than the costs if you get them right," says MacMillan.
Though the study focused on Auckland, the researchers think that the general principles would apply to other cities where cars rule the road. "Auckland is very similar in design and transport patterns to many US cities, so we expect our findings to be relevant to the US," MacMillan explains. The exact savings would be different; the study wasn't trying to predict exact numbers, but show how different scenarios compare to each other.

The study is already beginning to influence policymakers in Auckland, and the researchers hope that it will continue to make a difference. "The tide is turning, I believe, in New Zealand and in many other countries that have neglected the bicycle in the last two decades," says Alastair Woodward, a co-author of the study.

"It makes sense in so many ways to bring back the bike, and this is happening. But only slowly. We hope our study, and others like it, will strengthen the arm of policymakers who are trying to shift the status quo."
For the original article click here

Monday, August 18, 2014

THE SUMMER OF DEMOS: ONE-DAY PROTECTED BIKE LANES SWEEP ACROSS AMERICA

Michael Andersen, Green Lane Project staff writer
A temporary demo during StreetsAlive! in Fargo, N.D., on July 15. Photo: Dakota Medical Foundation.


This is what a tipping point looks like.
Around the country in the summer of 2014, community groups across the United States have been using open-streets events and other festivals to give thousands of Americans their first taste of a protected bike lane.
From small-town Kansas to the middle of Atlanta, communities (many of them inspired by last summer's successful $600 demo project in Minneapolis) have been using handmade barriers and relatively tiny amounts of money to put together temporary bikeways that spread the knowledge of the concept among the public and officials.

"Every traffic engineer who touches a street in Oakland, they were all out on their bikes checking it out," said Dave Campbell of East Bay Bike Coalition, who led the creation of maybe the year's most beautiful demo on Telegraph Avenue there. (Click to enlarge -- it's worth it.)

"We wanted this to look awesome," Campbell said in an interview. "People would see this and go,That's f------ awesome. I want that on my street."

Here are some of the results from around the country:

Lawrence, Kan.: 9th Street, April 25

Photo: Matt Kleinmann.

Oakland, Calif.: Telegraph Avenue, May 8

Photo: Bike East Bay.
That's Oakland Mayor Jean Quan having a great time riding a bike share bike in a protected bike lane.
Advocacy group Bike East Bay also created a video of their impressive Telegraph setup, which used traffic chalk for the shark-tooth yield markings, plus one gallon of exterior green paint and a homemade bike stencil to mark the lane's entrances. (Paint was possible because the local business district was already planning to pressure-wash the street afterward.) Here's a full manual on how Campbell and friends did it.

Minneapolis, Minn: Lyndale Avenue June 8

Photos: Nick Falbo, Alta Planning and Design.
In Minneapolis, the advocacy campaign Bikeways for Everyone not only created a sequel to last year's project, they added a demonstration of a protected bike lane intersection laid out personally by designer Nick Falbo of Alta Planning and Design:

Atlanta, Ga.: Auburn Avenue, June 21-22

Photo: Robin Smith.

Denver, Colo.: Arapahoe Street, June 25

Photo: Bike Denver.

Mountain View, Calif.: California Street, July 24


St. Paul, Minn., Wabasha, July 24

Photo: Matthew Dyrdahl.

Oakland, Calif.: Temescal Street, July 6

Photo: Bike East Bay.
On both Temescal and Telegraph, Bike East Bay created simple, attractive barriers by flattening cardboard boxes, rolling them into cylinders with binder clips at the top and bottom and setting them on top of standard orange traffic cones. They also used 600 feet of four-inch-wide reflective white traffic tape, which cost 29 cents a foot, and (in lieu of green paint to mark the entrances) two 4' x 20' x 5 mm black rubberized floor mats, spray-painted green, for $170 each.

A few tips from the experts

Give people a reason to enter the demo lane. This is especially important at an open-streets event that doesn't have car traffic on the street in the first place.
"Many people ignored the lane and stayed on the street," wrote Alyssa Gullekson of the Dakota Medical Foundation in an email about a July 15 pop-up in Fargo, N.D. "At the next event in August, we will route bicycles into the lane so that that is the route is assumed most appropriate. We will also have an individual directing people into lane to draw more attention to it."
Try to encourage conversations as well as the demo itself. In Mountain View, Calif., Safe Mountain View engineered longer conversations by offering a bike raffle, a free ice cream voucher for people who completed surveys and bike-themed coloring pages to entertain children "so the parents could talk to us with fewer distractions," organizer Cherie Walkowiak wrote.
Do everything you can to get city staff there. For Campbell of Bike East Bay, the most rewarding moment of one of his demos was when a city engineer working on a permanent protected bike lane came by to watch people using the temporary one.
"He's been designing this and analyzing it and talking to other people," Campbell said. "And all of the sudden he's standing there living it for a moment. You could see his facial expression has changed."