01337934

Component

Literature on the impact of motor vehicle traffic characteristics on cyclist safety shows that high motor vehicle speeds and volumes and the presence of heavy vehicles are all detrimental to cyclist safety. This suggests that cyclists may be safer on side streets than on busy arterials. Bicycle boulevards—-traffic-calmed side streets signed and improved for cyclist use-—purport to offer cyclists a safer alternative to riding on arterials. Police-reported bicycle collision data and manually collected cyclist count data from bicycle boulevards and parallel arterial routes in Berkeley, California since 2003 are used to test the hypothesis that bicycle boulevards have lower cyclist collision rates and a lower proportion of bicycle collisions resulting in severe injury. While no significant difference is found in the proportion of collisions that are severe, results show that collision rates on bicycle boulevards are two to eight times lower than those on parallel, adjacent arterial routes. The difference in collision rate is highly statistically significant, unlikely to be caused by any bias in the collision and count data, and cannot be easily explained away by self-selection or safety in numbers. This is strong evidence that street typology matters for cyclist safety and that bicycle boulevards, if properly implemented, can provide cyclists with safer alternatives to arterials.

01329018

11-1888

English

15p

2011

Transportation Research Board 90th Annual Meeting

DVD

Figures (4) ; References (10) ; Tables (4)

Arterial highways; Bicycle crashes; Bicycle facilities; Bicycle lanes; Crash rates; Crashes; Cyclists; Residential streets; Safety

Bicycle boulevards

Berkeley (California)

Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Safety and Human Factors; I82: Accidents and Transport Infrastructure

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2011 Paper #11-1888

TRIS, TRB

Feb 17 2011 5:57PM