Safety Evaluation of On-Street Bicycle Facility Design Features (2025)
Chapter: Summary
SUMMARY
The number of bicyclist fatalities increased from 1.9 percent to 2.2 percent of total crashes from 2009 to 2018, despite making up less than 1 percent of trips in the United States and despite dramatic improvements in driver and passenger safety during the same period. Data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System and the General Estimates System/Crash Report Sampling System indicates that 59 percent of the crashes resulting in bicyclist fatality occur at non-intersection midblock locations, emphasizing the need for separating bicycles from oncoming traffic. To address these concerns, many state and local departments of transportation (DOTs) have started installing bicycle-specific facilities or modifying the existing roadway facilities to accommodate bicyclists. Despite the increasing interest in these facilities, there is a lack of robust and data-driven studies proving the safety effectiveness on on-street bikeway designs.
The objective of the NCHRP Project 15-74 is to develop data-driven guidelines for selecting context-appropriate design features for safety improvements of on-street bikeway designs, including separated and non-separated on-street bicycle facilities. To accomplish the goal of this project, the research team has conducted a comprehensive literature review; developed roadmap for identifying the contextual factors affecting bicyclist safety at selected on-street bikeway sites; assessed a comprehensive list of data sources from multiple agencies; selected list of sites with relevant data; and conducted safety effectiveness evaluation of bikeway types using before-after and cross-sectional analysis. The findings of this research indicate that all bikeway types installed at midblock locations (bicycle lane, buffered bicycle lane and separated bicycle lanes) will improve bicyclist safety by reducing the total and fatal and injury bicyclist crashes. Most of the models developed in this project indicated a significant reduction in bicyclist crashes at sites with on-street bikeways. Additionally, the results indicate that converting/retrofitting the existing bikeway can also strengthen the safety performance of the sites if care is taken at the bicyclist-vehicle conflict points. The results of this project can potentially impact the existing publications and guidelines concerned with the bicyclist safety.
