Influence of Bike Lane Buffer Types on Perceived Comfort and Safety of Bicyclists and Potential Bicyclists

Abstract

Buffered and protected bike lanes are increasingly recognized as a valuable tool in enticing potential or wary cyclists to use a bicycle for transportation. These facilities—which provide extra space and (in the case of protected bike lanes) physical separation from motor vehicles—have been studied and are preferred by many bicyclists over traditional bike lanes. There has been little research, however, on the difference between buffer types and how they affect people's sense of the safety and comfort of bicycling. This paper uses data from surveys collected for a multicity study of newly constructed protected bike lanes to examine the influence of various hypothetical and actual buffered bike lane designs (both with and without physical protection) from the perspective of current bicyclists ( n = 1,111) and of residents living near the new facilities ( n = 2,283) who could be potential bicyclists. Findings suggest that striped or painted buffers offer some level of increased comfort, whereas buffers with some sort of physical protection, even protection as minimal as a plastic flexpost, yield significant increases in perceived comfort for potential cyclists with safety concerns (the interested but concerned). Of residents living near recently built protected bike lanes, 71% of all residents and 88% of the interested but concerned indicated that they would be more likely to ride a bicycle if motor vehicles and bicycles were physically separated by a barrier.

Bikeability: Assessing the Objectively Measured Environment in Relation to Recreation and Transportation Bicycling

“…Other types of infrastructure, such as sharrows and bicycle signs, may be insufficient to influence bicycling behavior in a meaningful way. Research suggests that protected bicycle lanes are perceived as the most safe and comfortable type of bicycling infrastructure, particularly among individuals who are most reluctant to ride (McNeil, Monsere, & Dill, 2015). In this study, meters of protected bicycle lanes were very low, and were completely lacking in the Jefferson County data, yielding low variability in this indicator, perhaps explaining why it was not as strongly associated with the behavior as bicycle lanes in general.…”

Who cycles more? Determining cycling frequency through a segmentation approach in Montreal, Canada

“…Due to the importance of safety perceptions on cycling frequency, usage, and behavior (Willis et al, 2015), different safety perception measures are included in our analysis, although they were not tested intensively in previous research. McNeil et al (2015) studied the comfort perception of four cyclists types on different types of infrastructure. However they found that perceptions of comfort did not matched reality.…”

The potential for bike riding across entire cities: quantifying spatial variation in interest in bike riding

“…The typology has been used to quantify potentially latent groups of bicyclists in cities, states, and countries. While the use of typologies to quantify the near-market of bicyclists across large cities and regions has been helpful in informing bike riding strategies, prior studies have not explored whether interest in bike riding varies within these geographies, such as across smaller spatial areas of cities and states (8)(9)(10)(11). The availability and quality of transport infrastructure often varies within cities depending on zoning, distance from the city, topography, socioeconomic status and community demographics (12)(13)(14).…”