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More from the UK: "Bike lanes save lives of drivers as well ascyclists, study finds"



 
 
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  #1  
Old May 30th 19, 04:48 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
SMS
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 9,477
Default 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  
Old May 30th 19, 09:00 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,538
Default 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  
Old May 31st 19, 12:00 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
John B. Slocomb
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 547
Default 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  
Old May 31st 19, 12:07 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
John B. Slocomb
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 547
Default 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  
Old May 31st 19, 12:18 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
SMS
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 9,477
Default 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  
Old May 31st 19, 12:35 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,538
Default 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  
Old May 31st 19, 12:43 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
SMS
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 9,477
Default 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  
Old May 31st 19, 12:49 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Bertrand[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 52
Default 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  
Old May 31st 19, 01:09 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 7,511
Default 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  
Old May 31st 19, 01:17 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 7,511
Default 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
 




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