Cities like to brag about how many kilometres (or miles) of bike paths they have, but the number doesn’t tell you anything about quality, connectivity, or usefulness.
They should instead be judged on actual bike volumes (like from bike counters) or overall cycling mode share.
They should instead be judged on actual bike volumes (like from bike counters) or overall cycling mode share.
Comments
It's annoying because it inflates numbers, but I really just feel it makes things more dangerous by giving people a false sense of security...
I'm just speculating here and I don't have any numbers to support this but I do believe these bad bike lanes, if we can even call them that, do more harm than doing nothing at all.
Painted bike lanes between two quasi-rural suburbs that cut out on 70km roads with nothing around is... technically not nothing but not what I'm looking for.
Some of the effort has to do with high gas prices, $4/gal. And some has to do with favorable weather, 55F today.
The best measures is completeness of quality network, ie:
% of households within 400m of connected protected network.
% local centres connected to network.
% major intersections with safe cycling facilities.
International best practice currently describes a "should-do, could-do, must-do" framework for infrastructure.
There's the ideal situation, a clever alternative, and a bare-minimim for safety... 1/2
This is a fairly standard exercise for transport planners, and can be used to assess nodal connections or population catchments. 2/2