|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
More from the UK: "Bike lanes save lives of drivers as well ascyclists, study finds"
Well actually it's from the U.S., reported in the UK.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bike-lane-cycling-road-safety-driver-deaths-fatalities-a8934841.html "With added bike lanes, fatal crash rates dropped in Seattle (by 61 per cent), San Francisco (by 49 per cent), Denver (by 40 per cent) and Chicago (by 38 per cent)." Cue the "Danger Danger" people to dispute the study. Maybe it wasn't the bike lanes at all, maybe it was more people wearing helmets--wait that couldn't be. Maybe it was more disc brakes. Maybe it was risk compensation. Did gardening injuries go up or down? |
Ads |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
More from the UK: "Bike lanes save lives of drivers as well ascyclists, study finds"
On 5/30/2019 11:48 AM, sms wrote:
Well actually it's from the U.S., reported in the UK. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bike-lane-cycling-road-safety-driver-deaths-fatalities-a8934841.html "With added bike lanes, fatal crash rates dropped in Seattle (by 61 per cent), San Francisco (by 49 per cent), Denver (by 40 per cent) and Chicago (by 38 per cent)." Cue the "Danger Danger" people to dispute the study. Maybe it wasn't the bike lanes at all, maybe it was more people wearing helmets--wait that couldn't be. Maybe it was more disc brakes. Maybe it was risk compensation. Did gardening injuries go up or down? Right, we're not allowed to dispute the study, because it conforms to Scharf's prejudices. Scharf saw the British propaganda ad for the study. I saw the one published in America. I'd read the paper, but the advertisement seems to be premature; the article's not available yet. But the American promotion publicity for the paper makes it clear that Ferenchak and Marshall remain masters of propaganda by implication. They said "Researchers looked through 13 years of data from 12 large U.S. cities with high-bicycling mode shares, including Denver, Dallas, Portland, Ore., and Kansas City, Mo. During those [unspecified] years, the United States saw a 51% increase in bicycling to work and the number of protected bike lanes double each year starting in 2009. In a longitudinal study, the researchers investigated over 17,000 fatalities and 77,000 severe injuries." But if there was such an increase - which is debatable - "protected bike lanes doubling each year" had approximately zero relation. Why? Because there are still only about 300 miles of "protected" bike lanes in the entire nation, out of 400 million miles of roads. "Protecting" a block here and a block there - which is what's usually done - seems very unlikely to have a national effect. Also, there's the inconvenient fact that "protected" bike lanes continue to be built ("Faster than ever!" proponents would say) yet bike commuting actually dropped in recent years. See https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ms/2319972002/ which points out that the national bike mode share has dropped, and in certain cities, dropped precipitously despite the building of new facilities. The League of American Bicyclists' rah-rah publication https://bikeleague.org/sites/default..._2017_KM_0.pdf (with no mention of the national drop, and with numbers massaged to be as perky as possible) mentions Pittsburgh's 45.2% _drop_ from 2016 to 2017, a time when I know firsthand that the city has been furiously installing bike accommodation of all kinds. Similarly, Portland keeps adding new gizmos, but sees no parallel increase. (Just a 1% increase from 2011 to 2017, and a 0.1% increase from 2016 to 2017.) In other words: The "dose response" is absent. Bike lanes, included "protected" ones, are more common each year, but bike commuting is not increasing in parallel. That shoots down facility count as a driver for bike mode share. And U.S. bike mode share remains less than 1% overall, meaning we're talking about low counts and rare events that are subject to outsized random variation. Ferenchak and Marshall seem to have settled on a career path of massaging numbers any way possible to promote bike segregation. I'm sure they're welcomed and coached by others with that same objective. But they're not doing actual cyclists any good. -- - Frank Krygowski |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
More from the UK: "Bike lanes save lives of drivers as well as cyclists, study finds"
On Thu, 30 May 2019 08:48:22 -0700, sms
wrote: Well actually it's from the U.S., reported in the UK. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bike-lane-cycling-road-safety-driver-deaths-fatalities-a8934841.html "With added bike lanes, fatal crash rates dropped in Seattle (by 61 per cent), San Francisco (by 49 per cent), Denver (by 40 per cent) and Chicago (by 38 per cent)." Cue the "Danger Danger" people to dispute the study. Maybe it wasn't the bike lanes at all, maybe it was more people wearing helmets--wait that couldn't be. Maybe it was more disc brakes. Maybe it was risk compensation. Did gardening injuries go up or down? https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...488?via%3Dihub The full title of that study seems to be " Why cities with high bicycling rates are safer for all road users. Wesley E. Marshall, Nicholas N. Ferenchak. Journal of Transport & Health, 2019. and an abstract of the study states: Despite bicycling being considered ten times more dangerous than driving, the evidence suggests that high-bicycling-mode-share cities are not only safer for bicyclists but for all road users. We look to understand what makes these cities safer. Are the safety differences related to "safety-in-numbers" of bicyclists, or can they be better explained by built environment differences or the people that inhabit them? Results The results suggest that more bicyclists is not the reason these cities are safer for all road users. Better safety outcomes are instead associated with a greater prevalence of bike facilities - particularly protected and separated bike facilities - at the block group level and, more strongly so, across the overall city. Higher intersection density, which typically corresponds to more compact and lower-speed built environments, was strongly associated with better road safety outcomes for all road users. The variables representing gentrification also accounted for much of our explainable variation in safety outcomes. Conclusions This paper provides an evidence-based approach to building safer cities. While the policy implications of this work point to protected and separated bike infrastructure as part of the solution, we need to keep in mind that these approaches are complementary and should not be considered in isolation. Moreover, our results - particularly the safety disparities associated with gentrification - suggest equity issues and the need for future research. -- Cheers, John B. |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
More from the UK: "Bike lanes save lives of drivers as well as cyclists, study finds"
On Thu, 30 May 2019 16:00:46 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote: On 5/30/2019 11:48 AM, sms wrote: Well actually it's from the U.S., reported in the UK. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bike-lane-cycling-road-safety-driver-deaths-fatalities-a8934841.html "With added bike lanes, fatal crash rates dropped in Seattle (by 61 per cent), San Francisco (by 49 per cent), Denver (by 40 per cent) and Chicago (by 38 per cent)." Cue the "Danger Danger" people to dispute the study. Maybe it wasn't the bike lanes at all, maybe it was more people wearing helmets--wait that couldn't be. Maybe it was more disc brakes. Maybe it was risk compensation. Did gardening injuries go up or down? Right, we're not allowed to dispute the study, because it conforms to Scharf's prejudices. Scharf saw the British propaganda ad for the study. I saw the one published in America. I'd read the paper, but the advertisement seems to be premature; the article's not available yet. But the American promotion publicity for the paper makes it clear that Ferenchak and Marshall remain masters of propaganda by implication. They said "Researchers looked through 13 years of data from 12 large U.S. cities with high-bicycling mode shares, including Denver, Dallas, Portland, Ore., and Kansas City, Mo. During those [unspecified] years, the United States saw a 51% increase in bicycling to work and the number of protected bike lanes double each year starting in 2009. In a longitudinal study, the researchers investigated over 17,000 fatalities and 77,000 severe injuries." But if there was such an increase - which is debatable - "protected bike lanes doubling each year" had approximately zero relation. Why? Because there are still only about 300 miles of "protected" bike lanes in the entire nation, out of 400 million miles of roads. "Protecting" a block here and a block there - which is what's usually done - seems very unlikely to have a national effect. Also, there's the inconvenient fact that "protected" bike lanes continue to be built ("Faster than ever!" proponents would say) yet bike commuting actually dropped in recent years. See https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ms/2319972002/ which points out that the national bike mode share has dropped, and in certain cities, dropped precipitously despite the building of new facilities. The League of American Bicyclists' rah-rah publication https://bikeleague.org/sites/default..._2017_KM_0.pdf (with no mention of the national drop, and with numbers massaged to be as perky as possible) mentions Pittsburgh's 45.2% _drop_ from 2016 to 2017, a time when I know firsthand that the city has been furiously installing bike accommodation of all kinds. Similarly, Portland keeps adding new gizmos, but sees no parallel increase. (Just a 1% increase from 2011 to 2017, and a 0.1% increase from 2016 to 2017.) In other words: The "dose response" is absent. Bike lanes, included "protected" ones, are more common each year, but bike commuting is not increasing in parallel. That shoots down facility count as a driver for bike mode share. And U.S. bike mode share remains less than 1% overall, meaning we're talking about low counts and rare events that are subject to outsized random variation. Ferenchak and Marshall seem to have settled on a career path of massaging numbers any way possible to promote bike segregation. I'm sure they're welcomed and coached by others with that same objective. But they're not doing actual cyclists any good. Note that the study, that I reference in some detail in another post, talks about bike lanes in conjunction with many other factors and closed by saying, "While the policy implications of this work point to protected and separated bike infrastructure as part of the solution, we need to keep in mind that these approaches are complementary and should not be considered in isolation. Moreover, our results - particularly the safety disparities associated with gentrification - suggest equity issues and the need for future research." see: https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...488?via%3Dihub -- Cheers, John B. |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
More from the UK: "Bike lanes save lives of drivers as well ascyclists, study finds"
On 5/30/2019 4:00 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
snip Results The results suggest that more bicyclists is not the reason these cities are safer for all road users. Better safety outcomes are instead associated with a greater prevalence of bike facilities - particularly protected and separated bike facilities - at the block group level and, more strongly so, across the overall city. Higher intersection density, which typically corresponds to more compact and lower-speed built environments, was strongly associated with better road safety outcomes for all road users. The variables representing gentrification also accounted for much of our explainable variation in safety outcomes. As we saw with what happened in Columbus, bicycle facilities increase ridership, even when they are poorly designed. When you combine the higher numbers of cyclists drawn to ride because of bicycle facilities, with actual well-designed bicycle facilities, it gives you the best of both worlds--more cyclists and less injuries. Remember, cities are trying to get the people that are reluctant to ride a bike out there. The people that will ride a bike whether or not their are protected bike lanes are not their target market for bicycle infrastructure. |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
More from the UK: "Bike lanes save lives of drivers as well ascyclists, study finds"
On 5/30/2019 7:07 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Thu, 30 May 2019 16:00:46 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote: On 5/30/2019 11:48 AM, sms wrote: Well actually it's from the U.S., reported in the UK. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bike-lane-cycling-road-safety-driver-deaths-fatalities-a8934841.html "With added bike lanes, fatal crash rates dropped in Seattle (by 61 per cent), San Francisco (by 49 per cent), Denver (by 40 per cent) and Chicago (by 38 per cent)." Cue the "Danger Danger" people to dispute the study. Maybe it wasn't the bike lanes at all, maybe it was more people wearing helmets--wait that couldn't be. Maybe it was more disc brakes. Maybe it was risk compensation. Did gardening injuries go up or down? Right, we're not allowed to dispute the study, because it conforms to Scharf's prejudices. Scharf saw the British propaganda ad for the study. I saw the one published in America. I'd read the paper, but the advertisement seems to be premature; the article's not available yet. But the American promotion publicity for the paper makes it clear that Ferenchak and Marshall remain masters of propaganda by implication. They said "Researchers looked through 13 years of data from 12 large U.S. cities with high-bicycling mode shares, including Denver, Dallas, Portland, Ore., and Kansas City, Mo. During those [unspecified] years, the United States saw a 51% increase in bicycling to work and the number of protected bike lanes double each year starting in 2009. In a longitudinal study, the researchers investigated over 17,000 fatalities and 77,000 severe injuries." But if there was such an increase - which is debatable - "protected bike lanes doubling each year" had approximately zero relation. Why? Because there are still only about 300 miles of "protected" bike lanes in the entire nation, out of 400 million miles of roads. "Protecting" a block here and a block there - which is what's usually done - seems very unlikely to have a national effect. Also, there's the inconvenient fact that "protected" bike lanes continue to be built ("Faster than ever!" proponents would say) yet bike commuting actually dropped in recent years. See https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ms/2319972002/ which points out that the national bike mode share has dropped, and in certain cities, dropped precipitously despite the building of new facilities. The League of American Bicyclists' rah-rah publication https://bikeleague.org/sites/default..._2017_KM_0.pdf (with no mention of the national drop, and with numbers massaged to be as perky as possible) mentions Pittsburgh's 45.2% _drop_ from 2016 to 2017, a time when I know firsthand that the city has been furiously installing bike accommodation of all kinds. Similarly, Portland keeps adding new gizmos, but sees no parallel increase. (Just a 1% increase from 2011 to 2017, and a 0.1% increase from 2016 to 2017.) In other words: The "dose response" is absent. Bike lanes, included "protected" ones, are more common each year, but bike commuting is not increasing in parallel. That shoots down facility count as a driver for bike mode share. And U.S. bike mode share remains less than 1% overall, meaning we're talking about low counts and rare events that are subject to outsized random variation. Ferenchak and Marshall seem to have settled on a career path of massaging numbers any way possible to promote bike segregation. I'm sure they're welcomed and coached by others with that same objective. But they're not doing actual cyclists any good. Note that the study, that I reference in some detail in another post, talks about bike lanes in conjunction with many other factors and closed by saying, "While the policy implications of this work point to protected and separated bike infrastructure as part of the solution, we need to keep in mind that these approaches are complementary and should not be considered in isolation. Moreover, our results - particularly the safety disparities associated with gentrification - suggest equity issues and the need for future research." see: https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...488?via%3Dihub Our academic library still doesn't have it. I'll keep checking back. -- - Frank Krygowski |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
More from the UK: "Bike lanes save lives of drivers as well ascyclists, study finds"
On 5/30/2019 4:07 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
snip "While the policy implications of this work point to protected and separated bike infrastructure as part of the solution, we need to keep in mind that these approaches are complementary and should not be considered in isolation. Moreover, our results - particularly the safety disparities associated with gentrification - suggest equity issues and the need for future research." It's also important to understand that a city doesn't need to cover every single foot (or mile) with protected bike lanes in order to make a difference. Selecting the areas where problems most often occur is often sufficient, and choosing one route out of many possible routes for a protected bike lane is adequate, you don't have to have every parallel road with identical infrastructure. This is what cities around here do, we look at where protected bike lanes will have the most effect and concentrate our financial resources on those areas. Also, be very careful when looking at the statistics of how ridership levels change. Sometimes an area will have a steady increase over a long period of time then all of a sudden have one bad year. An anomaly can be a weather event, a natural disaster, or a host of other things. Some people intentionally take numbers completely out of context in an effort to mislead people. I can tell you that bicycle commuting in Silicon Valley probably fell significantly for 2019 because we've had an extremely wet winter and spring. Last year we had an unprecedented number of bad air days due to large wildfires which led to less cycling. For example lets look at Pittsburgh, PA. From 1990 to 2017 they had a 240.4% increase in those 27 years. From 2006 to 2017 they had a 67.4% increase over 11 years. From 2011 to 2017 they had a 2% increase over six years. But there was a drop of 45.2% from 2016 to 2017. You can't ignore a long-term huge increase and then look only at a single year─ that kind of cherry=picking of statistics is extremely dishonest and is something that you often see when someone is trying to manipulate statistics to suit a particular agenda. |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
More from the UK: "Bike lanes save lives of drivers as well ascyclists, study finds"
see: https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...488?via%3Dihub Our academic library still doesn't have it. I'll keep checking back. It's on Sci-Hub: https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/1...th.2019.03.004 |
#9
|
|||
|
|||
More from the UK: "Bike lanes save lives of drivers as well ascyclists, study finds"
On Thursday, May 30, 2019 at 7:43:08 PM UTC-4, sms wrote:
On 5/30/2019 4:07 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote: snip "While the policy implications of this work point to protected and separated bike infrastructure as part of the solution, we need to keep in mind that these approaches are complementary and should not be considered in isolation. Moreover, our results - particularly the safety disparities associated with gentrification - suggest equity issues and the need for future research." It's also important to understand that a city doesn't need to cover every single foot (or mile) with protected bike lanes in order to make a difference. Selecting the areas where problems most often occur is often sufficient, and choosing one route out of many possible routes for a protected bike lane is adequate, you don't have to have every parallel road with identical infrastructure. This is what cities around here do, we look at where protected bike lanes will have the most effect and concentrate our financial resources on those areas. Yet Streetsblog, StrongTowns and others recently staged demonstrations in which they put red plastic cups upside down on white bike lane stripes. They photographed cups that had been hit by cars and said "See? Stripes are NOT ENOUGH! It's time to build PROTECTED bike lanes!" There was no "... on certain streets..." or other modifiers. Similarly, the first paper by Ferenchak and Marshall said shared lane markings are not enough, and that barrier separation is necessary. Why? It wasn't because their (admittedly screwy) mashup of data showed no safety benefit for sharrows. It was because other treatments claimed more safety benefit. So if you have a street too narrow for a bike lane? No sharrows! Plow it up and widen it so there's room for barrier protection! What nonsense! Also, be very careful when looking at the statistics of how ridership levels change. Sometimes an area will have a steady increase over a long period of time then all of a sudden have one bad year. An anomaly can be a weather event, a natural disaster, or a host of other things. Some people intentionally take numbers completely out of context in an effort to mislead people. I can tell you that bicycle commuting in Silicon Valley probably fell significantly for 2019 because we've had an extremely wet winter and spring. Last year we had an unprecedented number of bad air days due to large wildfires which led to less cycling. For example lets look at Pittsburgh, PA. From 1990 to 2017 they had a 240.4% increase in those 27 years. From 2006 to 2017 they had a 67.4% increase over 11 years. From 2011 to 2017 they had a 2% increase over six years. But there was a drop of 45.2% from 2016 to 2017. You can't ignore a long-term huge increase and then look only at a single year─ that kind of cherry=picking of statistics is extremely dishonest and is something that you often see when someone is trying to manipulate statistics to suit a particular agenda. Yes, let's talk about interpretation of data. Pittsburgh had a huge increase from 1990 to 2017. According to Bike Pgh, the main advocacy organization there, the first commuting-oriented bike lanes went in during 2007. See https://www.bikepgh.org/about-us/history/ That means almost all the growth trumpeted by Scharf happened _before_ the relevant facilities. Many more bike facilities were installed since then, but the growth was minimal - Scharf claims only 2%, and a big drop last year.. ISTM the 1990 - 2011 growth couldn't be because of facilities. Instead, the growth was probably driven by the same factor that caused San Francisco's bike mode share to jump when no facilities were built. It became (perhaps briefly) quite fashionable to ride a bike. I'm all for increases in bicycling. But I'm not in favor of the current craze for saying "Riding is too dangerous unless you have barriers protecting you" or "Car tires must never touch the pavement where a bicyclist will ride." I'm not in favor of "Any bike facility is a good bike facility" - the mentality that's painted hundreds of miles of bike lanes within door zones, or to the right of right turn only lanes, or hidden behind parked cars. In general, I'm not a fan of either horror literature or fantasy literature.. It's regrettable that so many "bike advocates" engage in producing both. - Frank Krygowski |
#10
|
|||
|
|||
More from the UK: "Bike lanes save lives of drivers as well ascyclists, study finds"
On Thursday, May 30, 2019 at 7:49:21 PM UTC-4, Bertrand wrote:
see: https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...488?via%3Dihub Our academic library still doesn't have it. I'll keep checking back. It's on Sci-Hub: https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/1...th.2019.03.004 Got it. Thanks! - Frank Krygowski |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Stoned drivers are safer than drunk ones, study finds | Alycidon | UK | 3 | August 19th 15 08:48 PM |
Shimano, IMBA Release MTB Economics "Study" (Read "Lies") | Mike Vandeman | Mountain Biking | 33 | April 17th 08 06:10 AM |
Shimano, IMBA Release MTB Economics "Study" (Read "Lies") | Mike Vandeman | Social Issues | 32 | April 17th 08 06:10 AM |
Cycle lanes a "danger" to drivers. | Simon Mason[_2_] | UK | 10 | March 12th 08 01:44 AM |
Cycle lanes save lives | POHB | UK | 2 | July 18th 07 11:44 AM |