Bike Lanes Not Just Save Cyclists
In most cities in the United States, less than 2 percent of people commute to work by bike regularly. Why should a city invest in projects that only a small percentage of its population can benefit from?
Good bike infrastructure can directly help cyclists, but a new study from the University of Colorado Denver finds that good bike infrastructure also has ripple effects that benefit everyone in the city — and significantly fewer traffic deaths for drivers and pedestrians.
“Bicycling-heavy cities are some of the safest cities around,” says study co-author Wesley Marshall. This is not because bicycling in itself is inherently safer–by the fatality numbers, public transit is the safest way to get around, and driving is estimated to be safer than cycling on a deaths-per-mile basis. But Marshall and his co-author Nicholas Ferenchak argue that it’s the infrastructure that cities are building to support and protect cycling that’s creating a safer situation on the roads for everyone.
Researchers reviewed 13 years of data from 12 major U.S. cities with high bike use and analyzed the relationship between annual road traffic deaths with the number of cyclists and the amount of urban bike infrastructure. As a result, the cities with the most protected bike lanes and infrastructure had a 44% lower road fatality rate (for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists) than other cities.
Marshall also points out that as these infrastructure improvements and safety improvements, or even just safety awareness increases, more people may start cycling, putting pressure on cities to add more and better infrastructure. Especially in the context of Vision Zero, a global initiative to end urban traffic deaths, the importance of good bicycle infrastructure to reduce urban traffic deaths cannot be overemphasized.
