When it comes to opinions about bike lanes, few of us are stuck in neutral. Love them or hate them though, new research says a dose of scientific rationality can help locate them in the best places. Congestion is minimized while more people ditch the car in favor of emissions-free, two-wheeled commuting.
Working with two other academics, smart city researcher Sheng Liu pulled data and talked to city planners in Vancouver and Chicago to develop a model that can help municipalities choose optimal locations as they expand their cycling lane networks in response to growing demand.
“Our model provides a systematic decision-making tool for municipalities to design new bike lanes using existing data,” said Prof. Liu, an assistant professor of operations management and statistics at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “It helps policymakers better quantify and evaluate the potential benefits and risks of bike lane construction. In particular, it can predict whether and where traffic will get better or worse and if emissions will go down.”
Bike lanes have taken off across North America, leading to reduced traffic fatalities, lower-cost access to private transportation and improved physical activity for cyclists. But, as many commuters have already concluded, “ignoring traffic dynamics when designing bike lanes can needlessly worsen congestion,” the researchers write. And there might not even be much of an uptick in cycling ridership.
