A new study from Germany has reinforced the understanding that high-traffic-volume streets are not a friendly environment for riding a bike.
In Germany, 30km/h streets are common and the law permits riders and traffic to mix on such streets without any special infrastructure. Use of the footpath by riders is forbidden.
Yet studies shows that about 20% of German riders on streets with limits lower than 50km/h are using the footpath.
Researchers at the Technical University of Dresden set out to discover at what point riders' preferences for the footpath begin to outweigh their comfort when riding on the roads.
The empirical work in this study is based on video observations at 273 study sites, with a total length of 124km located in 13 cities in Germany. A total of 260 of the study sites had no marking for bike riders, while 13 had bicycle symbols. All were two-lane roads.
A total of 34,874 bike riders were recorded at these study sites.
An interesting finding was that yes, as expected, riders did not like high volumes of cars, but if there were also large volumes of bikes on a road, riders were prepared to tolerate greater number of motor vehicles.
The researchers found that bike rider volume has a positive effect on the probability of riders using the carriageway instead of the footpath, explained by individual riders feeling safer on the road when they are part of a larger group.
But they said this should not be used as a reason for mixing bikes and traffic on high-traffic-volume routes as motor traffic volumes that were too high would have the opposite effect and more riders would take to the footpath.
The study also found that high volumes of pedestrians pushed bike riders onto the road in the same way that high volumes of cars pushed them onto the footpath.
The researchers concluded that a speed limit of <50km/h (40km/h or 30km/h) significantly increases the probability of riding on the carriageway in mixed traffic conditions, but that could only be recommended on streets with a maximum traffic volume of up to 400 motorised vehicles per hour.
"Mixed traffic designs should only be provided for cyclists where the volume and speed of motorised vehicles are low," the study says.
"Separate cycle facilities should be provided where volumes of motorised vehicles are high and/or motorised vehicles travel at higher speeds.”
Overall the findings seem to indicate that traffic-calming measures to reduce traffic speeds and volumes will be a good option where bikes routes are on local streets.
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