Separated Bicycle Facilities

New York City, New York

Prepared by Jill Mead, UNC Highway Safety Research Center

Background

Bicycling has a long history in New York. The country's first bike path was built in Brooklyn in 1894. In the 1970s, interest in improving bike infrastructure led to the construction of the first separated bike lanes in 1980, although they were quickly removed due to controversy. A 2006 study of bicyclist fatalities and severe injuries over the previous decade led to a renewed emphasis on bike infrastructure and bike safety. It found that New York had the same rate of bicycle fatalities as the rest of the country even though adults in New York were twice as likely to walk or bicycle to work. As a result, the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) pledged to increase staff and funding for its bicycling division.

Countermeasures

In September 2006, NYCDOT announced a number of projects intended to make bicycling safer through improvements to existing bicycle facilities and a dramatic expansion in bicycle infrastructure. Central to the plan was the addition of 200 miles of on-street bicycle infrastructure, including routes, lanes, and paths. Forty miles were planned for the 2007 fiscal year, 70 miles were planned for the 2008 fiscal year, and 90 miles were to be added in the 2009 fiscal year.

NYCDOT's 2008 strategic plan, Sustainable Streets, advanced an ambitious goalto double bicycle commuting by 2015. The plan reiterated the goal of 200 new lane-miles of bike lanes by 2009, and added the goals of 15 miles of protected bike lanes by 2010, and 5,000 new bike racks by 2011. A year later, an update to the strategic plan laid out even more ambitious goalsto double bicycle commuting by 2012 (three years early), and triple it by 2017.

Figure 1 shows the dramatic growth of on-street bicycle facilities from 2007 to 2013. On-street bicycle facilities were complemented by other infrastructure such as bicycle signal heads at intersections. By 2009, 1,211 bicycle racks and 20 bike parking shelters had been built.

Figure 1: Miles of new bicycle facilities in New York City, by facility type, 2007-2013

One of the first high profile projects was the replacement of bike lanes on portions of 8th and 9th Avenues with separated bike lanes beginning in 2007. The new bike lanes were some of the first parking- and signal-protected bicycle lanes in the United States. The reconstruction of 9th Avenue in 2008 also involved the installation of new sidewalks, a road diet, landscaping, the addition of pedestrian refuges, and the addition of the bike path. The project has increased bicyclist safety by adding an 8-foot buffer of raised concrete islands or a parking lane that separates bicyclists from motor vehicle traffic, as well as pavement markings, signs, and signal phases were added. The 9th Avenue project won the 2008 Best Program Award from the Institute of Transportation Engineers Transportation Planning Council. The success of the initial protected bike lane projects led to their expansion to other parts of the city. Figure 2 shows how protected bike lanes were extended north along 8th and 9th Avenue from 2007 through 2012. Separated bike lanes were later installed on portions of 1st and 2nd Avenues beginning in 2010. By 2013, there were 31 miles of protected bike lanes in New York City.

Figure 2: Phases of protected bike lane construction, 8th and 9th Avenues, New York City.

Evaluation and Results

To understand the safety effects of adding bicycle infrastructure, it is important for organizations to have data that allows them to understand changes in the number of bicyclists (i.e., exposure). NYCDOT has been conducting bicycle counts annually since 1984 at screenline locations that include bridges, roadways, protected bike lanes, and the Hudson River Greenway (NYCDOT, 2013). In 2007, NYCDOT began to conduct 18-hour bicycle counts three times a year (spring, summer, and fall). The average of the three totals is shown in Figure 3, which shows a gradual increase in the number of bicyclists at count locations from 2007-2011 and a slight decline from 2011-2012. In 2011, the city reached its 2008 goal of doubling bicycling commuting a year earlier than expected.

Figure 3

Since the frequency and location of counts have changed over time, the city created an index using the year 2000 as a baseline. For exposure data, rather than presenting the number of bicyclists counted, the city uses its "In-Season Cycling Indicator." Indexing the year 2000 to 100 allows for simple comparisons between years. For example, in 2011, there was a 290 percent increase in the number of cyclists at these locations compared to the year 2000, giving it an In-Season Cycling Indicator value of 390.

As required by Local Law 13 of 2011, NYCDOT also maintains a database of bicycle crashes reported by city agencies. These data are published annually by NYCDOT in its Bicycle Crash Data report. The report contains injury and fatality statistics for all crashes involving bicyclists (bicyclist-bicyclist, bicyclist-pedestrian, and bicyclist-motor vehicle) (NYCDOT, 2013).

Exposure and crash data are used to calculate the New York City Cycling Risk Indicator. Each year, the number of bicyclist fatalities and severe injuries is divided by the In-Season Cycling indicator and multiplied by 100 to produce the Cycling Risk Indicator. Figure 4 shows the relationship between the number of bicyclists (red), number of fatalities and severe injuries (blue), and how the risk of injury to individual bicyclists has decreased since 2000 (purple). Bicyclists in 2011 were 73 percent less likely to be involved in an accident leading to a serious injury or fatality than they were in 2000 (NYCDOT, 2013).

Figure 4

Conclusions and Recommendations

It is clear that the citywide bicycle infrastructure improvement projects have been instrumental in helping the city reach its goals of increasing bicycle ridership and safety. Having a robust system in place for conducting regular bike counts and recording bicyclist injuries and fatalities has allowed NYCDOT to track these metrics over time and create outreach materials for the public.

Costs

Much of the planning bike infrastructure projects are carried out through the Bicycle Network Development (BND) Program, which was created in 1994 as a joint project between the Department of City Planning and the Department of Transportation. The Department of Parks and Recreation joined the BND Program in 1996. Bicycle Network Development Program activities receive federal funding from the Congestion Mitigation Air Quality (CMAQ) program. Bikeways are promoted using CMAQ funding as a means of improving air quality, reducing congestion, and reducing transportation costs.

Under MAP-21, the Federal transportation funding bill adopted in 2012, bicycle infrastructure is funded through the Transportation Alternatives (TA) program. The construction of the Ninth Avenue protected bike lanes in 2008 was funded using Federal funds from TA's predecessor, Transportation Enhancements (TE), which contributed $2 million to the cost of the project.

Contact

New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT)
55 Water Street, 9th Floor
New York, NY 10041M

References

Haught, L. (2006). "City Rolls Out Plan for More than 200 Miles of Bike Lanes." The Villager. Available: http://thevillager.com/villager_177/cityrollsout.html

New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. (2013). History of Ocean Parkway Malls. Available: http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/B065/history

New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT). (2013). Bicyclists: Network and Statistics. Available: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/bikestats.shtml

• Ridership Statistics. http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/bike-counts.shtml and http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/ridership-facts.shtml
• Bicycle Crash Data. http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2012-bicycle-crash-data-report.pdf
• New York City Cycling Risk. http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2011-nyc-cycling-risk-indicator.pdf