Vehicular Cycling - Segregated Cycling As An Alternative

Segregated Cycling As An Alternative

Segregated cycle facilities exist in some areas, allowing cycling without sharing roads with motorized traffic. Cities that provide such facilities report a high degree of usage, such as in The Netherlands. A 2001 study in Edmonton, Canada concluded that cyclists found 1 minute of cycling in mixed traffic as onerous as 4.1 minutes on bike lanes or 2.8 minutes on bike paths. A study of cyclists in Washington D.C.found that cyclists were willing to spend on average 20.38 extra minutes per trip to travel on an off-street bicycle trail when the alternative was riding on a street with parked cars. Forester believes segregated cycle facilities to be more dangerous than on-road cycling and that, in the case of sidepaths, they can only be used safely by cycling "very slowly".

Forester's view has drawn criticism; urban planning professor John Pucher writes that "although Forester makes a number of theoretical arguments why bikeways are unsafe, his empirical test of the superiority of vehicular cycling is based on a sample of one—a single bike ride he took on a new bike path in Palo Alto, California." Forester objects to rejection of his test results as being non-scientific due to the test not having been repeated by anyone else.

Pucher's various transnational studies of bicycle transportation lead him to conclude that "the overwhelming evidence is that cycling is much safer and more popular precisely in those countries where bikeways, bike lanes, special intersection modifications, and priority traffic signals are the key to their bicycling policies." The authors of a 2009 meta-study on cycle infrastructure safety research at the University of British Columbia similarly conclude that "in comparison to cycling on bicycle-specific infrastructure (paths, lanes, routes), on-road cycling appears to be less safe."

Forester objects to Pucher's conclusions, primarily on the grounds that Pucher ascribes the increase in use of bikes and bike safety observed to the bikeways without showing that the bikeways are the actual cause of the increased use or safety.

Jennifer Dill and Theresa Carr's research on bicycle transportation in 35 U.S. cities also suggests that "higher levels of bicycle infrastructure are positively and significantly correlated with higher rates of bicycle commuting"; and a 2010 study comparing streets in Copenhagen that had had cycle tracks and bicycle lanes added to them found that cycling volume increased 20%. However, on the cycle track streets bicycle accidents increased 10% more than would be expected from the changed bicycle and automobile traffic volumes, making the cycle tracks less safe for cyclists than the unmodified roads. Streets with bicycle lanes added saw a 5% increase in bicycle traffic but a 49% increase in bicycle accidents. Despite this, the study notes that "the gains in health from increased physical activity much, much greater than the losses in health resulting from a slight decline in road safety." It is not known, from the study, how much of the increase in cycling on the modified streets was just a displacement of existing bicycle traffic from nearby streets to the modified streets, or a true increase, if any, of bicycling.