Method to Identify and Visualize Barriers in a Low-Stress Bike Network

Abstract

Low-stress bike networks are often disconnected, with gaps or barriers that make travel between two points impossible without riding on high-stress roads. Barriers can also force long detours that people are not willing to make. Although existing methods of low-stress bike network analysis have been used to point out some barriers, a method was needed to systematically identify and draw barriers to assist in network planning. Such a method was developed, taking only the low-stress network as an input, and yielding a set of polylines that indicated barriers to bicycling. Applications in Arlington, Virginia and Boston, Massachussets showed how it detected what might otherwise have been hidden barriers. The method also successfully highlighted critical low-stress links that breached what would otherwise have been a far longer barrier.

Impact of One-Way Streets and Contraflow on Low-Stress Bicycle Network Connectivity

“…Previous studies ( 2 , 4 ) have shown how roads with high traffic stress, together with natural and manufactured barriers such as rivers and freeways, create barriers to cycling, sometimes dividing a city into islands with no connection to each other. However, studies of low-stress bike networks have paid little or no attention to the barrier effect of directional restrictions.…”