Safety Evaluation of On-Street Bicycle Facility Design Features (2025)
Chapter: 7 Conclusions
CHAPTER 7. CONCLUSIONS
Historically, traffic engineers and vehicular cycling community have vehemently opposed to separating bicycles from vehicles. Unfortunately, this approach has resulted in more bicyclist fatalities, specially at midblock locations, as the vehicle and passenger safety have become priority leaving the bicyclist vulnerable to increasing dangers from vehicles. The increasing number of bicyclist fatalities, subsequent concerns of bicycling advocacy groups who increasingly rejected VC philosophies, and the publication of the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide in 2010 led to a proliferation of bikeways that separate bicyclists from motorized traffic throughout North America over the last decade. Although the interest in installing bikeways at on-street midblock locations have increased, however there is a lack of context-based and data-driven guidance for strengthening the safety performance of different bikeway designs. One of the major gaps limiting the evidence-based engineering decisions is the lack of relevant data that prevents the safety analysts from developing high-quality predictive methods for assessing the safety effectiveness of bikeways at midblock locations.
The NCHRP Project 15-74 developed robust database by examining comprehensive list of data sources and conducted safety effectiveness evaluation of bikeway types at midblock sites. The findings of this research indicates that all types of bikeways can help to reduce total and fatal and injury crashes involving bicyclists. These findings are mostly statistically significant and indicate a major reduction in bicyclist crashes. Results of safety analysis also indicate that converting/retrofitting the existing bikeway can help to improve the safety performance of these facilities.
Based on the increasing interest in separated bikeways, the research team then uses the findings of safety analysis and visual assessment of sites with high number of crashes to develop guidelines for selecting and installing separated bicycle lanes. Important consideration needs to be given to following design elements and contextual factors when selecting sites for installing separated bicycle lanes for improving bicyclist safety: bikeway designs (e.g., width, one or two-way, one or both directions of travel), driveway design, exposure and operations, parking removal or reorganization, frequency of access points (e.g., driveways and garage entrances), curbside management and pedestrian crossings. A guide on design elements of separated bicycle lanes that affect bicyclist safety at midblock locations is provided in the associated publication, NCHRP
Research Report 1136: On-Street Bicycle Facility Design Features: A Guide, while practice-ready implementation considerations are presented in the Technical Memorandum (Implementation).
