If you build it, they will come.
A new ten-year study from several Canadian universities show that bike lanes can reduce injuries and increase bicycling rates.
But only if they’re protected.
According to the study, painted bike lanes showed an actual increase in bicycling injuries, as well as either only slight increases in bicycling rates. Or even a decrease in one city.
Protected bike lanes are another matter. They showed either no effect, or a drop in bike-rated injuries, while resulting in significantly higher riding rates — up to 700% in one city.
Results for converting painted lanes to protected bike lanes were inconclusive, simply because there weren’t enough examples to draw a conclusion.
Another interesting tidbit was that researchers had to verify both the type of bike lanes and their installation dates, because municipal records were often either inaccurate, or misidentified what was installed.
Which makes you wonder if they were referring to what Los Angeles too often calls a protected bike lane, while offering little more than a little car-tickler bendie-post to keep errant drivers out, rather than any form of actual protection.
Photo of the late, great MOVE Culver City protected bike lane by Mitchell Guzik.
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Another study, this time from the UK, shows that induced demand is real.
In more ways than one.
The process of widening highways to cure congestion has been compared to losing weight by loosening your belt or buying bigger pants, because traffic will soon increase to meet, or exceed, the additional capacity.
Hence, inducing demand.
Like the widening of the 405 Freeway over the Sepulveda Pass, which cost $1 billion and resulted in increased congestion in less than a year.
We would have gotten more for our money if they had just burned that billion bucks and used it to power the city.
But now a study from England’s iconic Cambridge University shows that the same thing works with bike lanes and transit lanes, as well.
Build or expand a new bike lane, and the number of bicyclists using it will go up; improve train or bus service, and the same holds true — the added capacity encourages more people to use it.
Although as that Canadian study shows, the quality of the infrastructure matters, too.
Build a bike lane that people feel safe using, and they will. Build a bike lane they don’t feel safe using, and they won’t.
Which means we need to demand the kind of infrastructure that will induce demand.
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Calbike responded to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget by calling for an additional $200 million for the state Active Transportation Program, and $15 million for ebike incentives, arguing it’s “one of the most cost-effective, scalable, and immediately transformative investments California can make.”
The ATP remains California’s only dedicated statewide funding source for walking and bicycling infrastructure. It is also one of the state’s most effective climate tools. Yet, despite delivering measurable reductions in vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions, ATP funding continues to lag far behind demand. In recent funding cycles, the California Transportation Commission has been forced to turn away the vast majority of high-quality, shovel-ready projects. At the same time, the transportation budget preserves billions in highway and freight investments that continue to induce driving, increase pollution, and undermine the state’s climate goals. These backward-facing investments lock Californians into decades of higher emissions and greater exposure to climate disasters, even as the state acknowledges the scale of the climate crisis.
Governor Newsom has been clear: “This January budget is not the final word. It is a beginning—a statement of purpose.” CalBike urges the Legislature to use that opening to correct the imbalance in transportation spending. That begins with significantly increasing funding for the Active Transportation Program and making a clear commitment to a transportation system that prioritizes people, safety, and climate outcomes over vehicle throughput alone.
Let’s hope someone is listening this time.
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Meanwhile, Brooks forwards a LinkedIn profile for one of the people who helped lead the disastrous California Ebike Incentive Program, who seems to frame it as an enviable success.
Because as we all know, gaslighting is an invaluable career skill if you’re going to work in government.
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In news that should surprise absolutely no one, a former cop is alleging that no one properly investigated a 13-year old crash involving the wife of the premier, or governor, of Australia’s Victoria state, and a 15-year old boy on a bicycle.
One that cost the kid his spleen.
According to the premier, his wife had came to a full stop, and was just starting to turn when the boy came flying out of the woods on a bike path, and slammed into the side of her SUV with enough force to bash in her windshield and fly over her car.
That’s what she says, anyway.
Because after that, things get a little funny. The officer initially assigned to the case — the same one making the allegations — says he was rushing to the scene when he was told, in effect, to never mind.
Mr Hanley, who was initially instructed to attend the crash scene before being ordered to stand down, alleges police committed at least 35 procedural failures.
He claims officers failed to interview Mr Meuleman (the victim) or key witnesses, did not properly examine the vehicle involved, and allowed the investigation to die a natural death.
Mr Hanley has also alleged Mr Andrews delayed calling triple-0 (or 911 in this country) for more than six minutes and that the damaged SUV was moved from the scene, claims the former premier has previously rejected.
It’s not like a sitting premier could have pulled strings to get the investigation dropped or anything, directly or indirectly.
Right?
It’s taken the boy’s family 13 years to get justice in this case. And nothing says they’re going to get it now.
But maybe now they’ve got a shot.
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Streets For All is hosting a mobility debate on January 22nd with the candidates running for LA City Controller.
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LADOT wants to know what you think as they prepare the city’s first Mobility Action Plan, which will guide how LA invests in streets, sidewalks, transit, biking, and walking for the next 5–20 years.
And no, I don’t know how that’s any different from the city’s mobility plan, which purports to do virtually the same thing.
Unless the MAP is how the city plans to implement the mobility plan, which they have so far been doing everything they can to avoid implementing.
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The war on cars may be a myth, but the war on bikes just keeps on going.
A writer for Canada’s conservative National Post says a judge’s ruling that a right to bike lanes is guaranteed by the country’s charter — equivalent to our constitution — makes a mockery of it, and should be overturned on appeal.
But sometimes, it’s the people on two wheels behaving badly.
A local newspaper is calling for safety improvements on a South Carolina bridge after a bicyclist killed a pedestrian when the man wandered out in front of him on the shared pathway across the bridge, while riding at around 20 mph.
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Local
The popular Larchmont Village bike corral is now in its second decade of service; it was originally installed by LADOT in 2014 at the request of former CD4 Councilmember Tom LaBonge, in cooperation with local businesses and the erstwhile Flying Pigeon LA bike shop.
State
No news is good news, right?
National
CityLab makes the case for why we still don’t know if robotaxis are any safer than human drivers.
Police in Iowa are looking for a pair of motorcyclists who tore up a golf course, then fled on a bike path when police arrived, nearly hitting a pair of bystanders.
Damn. Chicago authorities are offering a $10,000 reward for information on whoever beat a 62-year old man to death on the Loop in 2023, first using a construction sign, then the victim’s own bicycle.
A 72-year old Tennessee writer confesses that he now own an e-mountain bike, of the ped-assist variety.
You’ve got to be kidding. Life is really cheap in Massachusetts, where a driver walked with a suspended sentence for killing a woman walking her bike in a crosswalk, while he was driving distracted and without a license.
Gothamist says a key test of New York Mayor Mamdani’s commitment to bicycling will be what he does with a three-block stretch of bike lanes on Bedford Ave, where the former parking-protected lane was abruptly removed by former Mayor Eric Adams in a effort to appease, and get the votes of, the Orthodox Jewish community.
Jury selection has begun in the trial of a “homeless drifter” accused of killing a 14-year old boy in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida more than four years ago, when the boy was attacked and stabbed for no apparent reason as he was riding his bike, leading to a multi-day search when the boy didn’t return home; the suspect changed his plea from an insanity plea to not guilty, which will void any future attempt at an insanity defense.
International
Bike Radar answers the burning question of whether a tubeless tire is more likely to blow out than a clincher with a tube.
Five cities where owning a bicycle can save you thousands of dollars, or the local equivalent, per year. Only one of which is in the US. And none of which is Los Angeles.
Rapha is addressing its financial problems by closing five stores in the US and UK, following eight successive years of financial losses; the closures leave 20 Rapha Clubhouse shops around the world.
The best five minutes of your day may be this piece from Canadian Cycling Magazine, recapping the best bicycling cameos in scripted television, from Monty Python and Benny Hill to the Simpsons and Family Guy. We’ll ignore for now that most unscripted television is, in fact, scripted. Just a little less so.
Life is cheap in England, where a road-raging driver was sentenced to a lousy 150 hours of community service for blaring on his horn and brake-checking a group of bicyclists. But at least the judge warned him to give people on bikes space and respect on the road.
Everything you always wanted to know about getting around Paris by bicycle, but were afraid to ask.
Dutch electronics chain Coolblue will now sell bike helmets, as well as require helmets for their bicycle couriers, after the company’s CEO fell off his bike and broke his front teeth. Even though bike helmets provide little to no mouth protection.
A Vietnamese website questions whether the new 3.6-mile bike lane in Ho Chi Minh City will spark greater interest in urban bicycling, and help make bikes the country’s new transportation solution.
Competitive Cycling
World champion and four-time Tour de France champ Tadej Pogačar joined hundreds of other bicyclists on a memorial ride for Samuele Privitera, the 19-year old Italian cyclist killed during last year’s Giro della Valle d’Aosta.
American cyclist Chloé Dygert has launched a crowdfunding campaign for former tracking cycling teammate Sarah Hammer-Kroening, one of US cycling’s most decorated athletes with four silver Olympic medals and 12 world titles, after Hammer-Kroening underwent seven operations for a severe medical condition; the page has raised nearly $89,000, far exceeding the previous $55,000 goal.
British mountain bikers competed in a 24-hour, snow-covered challenge over the weekend, completing as many laps of the 7.5-mile course as they can in that time period, in temperatures down to 0 degrees. Although that’s Celsius, which translates to a relatively balmy 32° Fahrenheit on this side of the Atlantic.
Finally…
Your next ebike doesn’t have to look like one, as long as you don’t need an actual water bottle in the water bottle holder. That feeling when you finally recreate the iconic movie scene of a bike flying in front of the moon with ET in the basket — without the actual flying, of course.
And tackling a 43.5-mile roundtrip over the highest mountain pass in Great Britain, aided by a rickety old bike and a “wee dram” of whiskey.
Or maybe a lot of “wee drams.”
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Be safe, and stay healthy. And get vaccinated, already.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
