I just pulled a PDF of it from Pitt's library system. I'll look over it sometime soon when I'm procrastinating about reading the journal articles I need to read in my own field. Hah. Looks interesting!
2012-02-25 19:04:44
3
Atlantic Cities: Do Bike Paths Promote Urban Bike Riding
Good mid-length read at The Atlantic Cities ) on Do Bike Paths Promote Bike Riding, an attempt at reconciling research into the effect of bike lanes (on-road routes like sharrows) and/or bike paths (off-road routes like MUPs, trails) on bicycle riding.
If I read it correctly, the AtlanticCities article says that meta-research concludes
•bike facilities (lanes and paths) do correlate with increased use of bikes
•increased use of bikes does not necessarily mean commuting to work
•universal approaches do not apply to individual locations
The actual journal article will be published in the March issue of Transportation, and when you click through to that you see the title and focus of the source work are slightly different and much more commute-to-work focused: "Cycling to work in 90 large American cities: new evidence on the role of bike paths and lanes.
From the abstract of the published paper:
Estimated elasticities indicate that both off-street paths and on-street lanes have a similar positive association with bike commute rates in U.S. cities. Our results are consistent with previous research on the importance of separate cycling facilities and provide additional information about the potentially different role of paths vs. lanes.
Our analysis also revealed that cities with safer cycling, lower auto ownership, more students, less sprawl, and higher gasoline prices had more cycling to work.
By comparison, annual precipitation, the number of cold and hot days, and public transport supply were not statistically significant predictors of bike commuting in large cities.
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I think my hero John Forester wouldn't like the separate facilities aspect much, but what really jumped out at me was: weather doesn't matter, and neither does public transport - although I would have thought that ride-bus/train-ride would have been a player.
I'm not going to pay the fee for the full paper, but I'm going to look for the journal article in the library come June-July, it might be interesting.
Cheers, V.
2012-02-25 14:28:11
Forrester ought to like the results though. More facilities mean more bike riders which mean safer streets and a much lower rate of injury and death. Really, what's not to like?
2012-02-25 20:54:52