Cities that have done the work to attract a lot of cyclists aren’t just safe for people on two wheels — they’re safer for drivers, pedestrians, and everyone else on the road, too. But why, exactly, is that true, and how can we use that insight to sell bike-friendly infrastructure and policy to a public that barely rides at all?
On this episode of The Brake, we’re back with Nick Ferenchak and Wes Marshall, who co-authored a new study of seven mid-sized cities that have gotten a lot of their residents into the saddle, and found that they reported 61 percent fewer traffic deaths than peer communities where everyone drives. And that finding may signal the need for a “new framework” for talking about what “bike” infrastructure is really for — and what kind of interventions can best protect people across all modes, if only by getting more residents out of their cars.
Listen in, and when you’re done, check out our previous episodes with Wes and Nick.
This excerpt has been edited for clarity and length.
Streetsblog: If we find that bike infrastructure makes everybody safer, should that change how we market bike improvements to the public? Should we not be selling this as a bicycle lane, but as a thing that’s going to keep you alive when you’re driving in your car? What are the pros and cons of de-centering the safety of people who bike and how we sell the kind of infrastructure policy changes that might protect them, versus centering the safety of people who will never get in the saddle and might not even like biking at all?
Ferenchak: Yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I guess Wes has been stepping on some toes with his book, so maybe I’ll step on some toes here. [Laughs.]
I think we need a new framework for transportation safety. We need to center not just biking, which is certainly part of it, but this multimodal approach to transportation. [That’s] the way that we’re going to realize better improvements in transportation safety.
Traditionally, the focus has been on making driving safer. And I don’t know — maybe we’ve maxed out on that approach. We’re never going to get remotely close to our peers if that’s the approach we take.
If you think back to the three E’s of transportation safety, even the Vision Zero approach doesn’t specifically call out that we need to be thinking multimodally here. We need a new framework that includes protected bike lanes on these arterials; that’s what’s going to get us to the next level of transportation safety improvements.
In addition to this paper we’re discussing, where we found that less driving is the biggest predictor of better traffic safety outcomes for these [mid-]size cities, I also wrote a paper looking at Vision Zero cities a couple of years ago; he ones doing the best are not the ones focusing on making driving safer, but on enabling people to walk, bike, and use public transportation more, because the safest trip is one that doesn’t involve a car.
I don’t know what we would call it, but I think we need a new paradigm for transportation safety. We need to continue to try to make driving safer, sure, but that can’t be the number one focus. We need to promote multimodality to get us closer to our peers internationally.
Marshall: This paper and the broader research changes and strengthens the counter-argument against investing in bike and transit infrastructure. You always hear, “No one’s biking; why are we even building these bike lanes?” The simple answer is, we need to make it safe for bicycling. But we’re finding it doesn’t just make it safe for cyclists; it makes it safe for everyone. We can save lives.
If we want to not call it bike infrastructure, we can call it ‘safety lanes’ or traffic calming or something else. This all needs to work together. And I think this really gives folks some strong ammunition against some of the common vocal minority arguments you hear when trying to get this infrastructure put in.
Ferenchak: I always like to say I’m not anti-car; this isn’t anti-car, it’s pro-giving people options. When [Roger] Geller looked at types of cyclists out there, I think he found that one-third reported ‘no way, no how;’ they’d never get on a bike. But that’s two-thirds of people who are open to biking. They’d like to bike more if they had that option.
What is bike commute mode share in the US? About 0.5 percent, if that? Sixty-six percent of people say they would like to bike if they had safe, convenient, comfortable options, but only 0.5 percent are actually out there. So this isn’t anti-car, we need to get people out of cars. We need to give people the option; they want to bike, but they don’t have that option right now. Not only will this get people walking, biking, and using public transit, but it will also improve safety for those still in cars.
Marshall: One of the hidden results in this paper is that land use is a viable solution to safety. If we put things closer and give people options other than driving, that is part of the solution to safety. Historically, we measure safety normalized per vehicle miles traveled, so the more you drive, the safer it seems. In this paper, we treated it as a health impact and societal impact per population, and you get different results. It speaks to land use being part of the solution.
