TheWashCycle

Standard Responses #3: Response to "Cyclists cause congestion"

Periodically, someone will try to make the claim that cyclists, due to their slower speeds, cause traffic congestion.

Bikes ... slow traffic, which creates more pollution.

Or that the introduction of bike lanes causes significant congestion.

removing auto lanes or narrowing them to accommodate dedicated cycling infrastructure tends to have a traffic calming effect, which often significantly increases traffic congestion.

There is, of course, a large amount of evidence to the contrary.

In one study, "Research On Bicycle Conversion Factors,” bikes were calculated to cause as much congestion as 0.28 passenger cars (less on trails, more when turning left).

In an AASHTO study, it was calculated that the passenger car equivalent for a bicycle depended on the width of the lane, but can be as low as 0.

“Opposed” means that a bicycle encounters interference from other road users, such as when making a left turn.

A third study, by Heru Sutomo, places the PCE for bikes in developing urban areas at 0.19.

The Victoria Transport Policy Institute translated this into a per vehicle mile cost. They calculated the cost of bicycle-induced congestion as 0.2 cents per vehicle mile. Passenger cars are more than ten times as high at 3.5 cents per mile. Even taking into account the 1.6 passengers per car and assuming one passenger per bike (probably a little low)  they per passenger cost becomes 0.2 cents per passenger mile for bikes and 2.2 cents per mile for cars - 11 times larger.

As for bike lanes, even when they result in closing whole roads, they might - by themselves - reduce congestion. And at an 11 time improvement, you don't have to induce many people to bike to cut down on congestion. Bikes don't cause congestion, they reduce it.

Cars are another issue.

Tour de Links - Murmur

Maillot Jaune: Apple applied for a patent that describes Apple's vision for using the iPhone, iPod, or other electronic device as an interface for a multi-feature bicycle computer.

Podium - Someone bought an $8000 bike that once belonged to Floyd Landis for $5. It had been found on the side of the interstate in Kentucky.

Podium - Levi Leipheimer won the race that Lance Armstrong pulled out of. He won, despite crashing, and beat Lance's record. Next goal for Levi: Eight straight Tour de France victories.

Maillot Vert: A cyclist going too fast down a bridge ATL in Clearwater, FL, with a passenger on the handlebar -  at night - hit and killed a pedestrian.

Maillot a Pois Rouge: Our mayoral candidates are better than Toronto's. One candidate said of cyclists that in the end he feels that it is "their fault" for being hit. And slgihtly related another round of Transportation recissions are coming and these may hit bike/ped funding especially hard.

Maillot Blanc: A town in England turned off it's traffic lights, and the intersections became faster and safer. Cyclists don't cause traffic, traffic lights do.

Lanterne Rouge: Even the conservative Denver Post thinks Dan Maes of "bike sharing is a U.N. Conspiracy" is crazy. "This man must not be governor." they write.

And even though I'm out of entries: The railroad trestle featured on the cover of the R.E.M. album* "Murmur" might become part of a rails to trails project - if it can be saved.

*For the young out there, albums were like CDs** except that they were bigger, would break and/or scratch if you looked at them funny, and had to flipped half way.

** For the very young, CDs were like DVDs but they only had music on them.

Cars Cause Congestion

From a very good Wired article

Komanoff found that every car entering the CBD causes an average of 3.23 person-hours of delays. Multiply that by $39.53—a weighted average of vehicles’ time value within and outside the CBD—and it turns out that the average weekday vehicle journey costs other New Yorkers $128 in lost time. 

He translates all traffic impacts—delays, collisions, injuries, air pollution—into dollars and cents; that way, it’s easy for users to compare the benefits and costs of different plans. He has even come up with a plan of his own that would, according to his calculations, collect $1.3 billion in motorist tolls per year—all of which would be spent on improving public transit—and save $2.5 billion in time costs by reducing delays. To that, add $190 million from decreased mortality as a result of making streets more bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly, $83 million in collision damage reduction, and $34 million in lower CO₂ emissions.

he produced a detailed statistical analysis of pedestrian and cyclist deaths—it showed that casualties are not random, unpredictable accidents but the foreseeable result of given traffic conditions.