A one-mile protected bike lane has been shown to decrease driver speeds and attract more cyclists to the route.
Data from a North Kansas City pilot project shows that adding a protected bike lane can play a significant role in reducing vehicle speeds and encouraging more biking. In addition to a one-mile protected bike lane on Armour Road in the summer of 2021, the city also added more visible crosswalks, landscaping, and pedestrian islands, writes Charles Pekow in Smart Cities Dive.
A study by Streetlight found that the number of cars going faster than 40 miles per hour on the mile-long stretch with a protected bike lane was reduced to almost zero. “Meanwhile, bike traffic more than doubled, from a daily average of 50 to 114. The report notes that bike traffic didn’t decrease on a parallel road that was used as a control for the project during that time, indicating that more people were riding, not transferring from nearby streets.”
The study did note that congestion worsened along the bike lane in the early part of the project, but started to dip in 2021.
Read the full story: Protected bike lanes in North Kansas City slowed traffic, increased biking: study
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