Bicycling

Bicycle Level of Service: Accounting for Protected Lanes, Traffic Exposure, and Delay

Fournier, Nicholas
Huang, Amy
Skabardonis, Alexander
Transportation Research Board
2021

Motorized traffic exposure and delay are two critical factors for bicycle level of service (LOS). Unfortunately, the current Highway Capacity Manual’s methodology for bicycle LOS fully accounts for neither. At the intersection level, motorized traffic speed and bicycle delay are not considered at all; and at the link level there is no account for one of the most effective traffic-exposure mitigating infrastructure types, separated bicycle lanes. This creates a systemic problem, enabling the design of roadways that ignore bicycle exposure and delay (i.e., comfort and safety), while giving...

Creating an Inclusive Bicycle Level of Service: Virtual Bicycle Simulator Study

Griswold, Julia B.
Aguilar, Edna
Wang, Han
Miah, Md Mintu
2025

Bicycle level of service (BLOS) is an essential performance measure for transportation agencies to monitor and prioritize improvements to infrastructure, but existing measures do not capture the nuance of facility differences on the state highway system. However, with the advancements in virtual reality (VR) technology, a VR bicycle simulator is an ideal tool to safely gather user feedback on a variety of bicycling environments and conditions. This research explored the benefits and limitations of using a VR environment to assess individuals’ bike infrastructure preferences. We conducted a...

Bicycle Infrastructure that Extends Beyond the Door: Examining Investments in Bicycle-Oriented Design Through a Qualitative Survey of Commercial Building Owners and Tenants

Orrick, Phyllis
Frick, Karen
Ragland, David R.
2011

This paper presents the results of a qualitative survey of commercial owners, managers, and occupants in the City of Berkeley who have invested in on-site bicycle facilities such as secure parking, showers, changing rooms, and clothing lockers, what we are calling “bicycle-oriented design” (BOD). The sites represent a selection of building types common in the commercial building stock in U.S. cities.The research is designed to answer three questions about the use of BOD: (1) what were motivations behind the decision to invest in BOD (2) what are the challenges and rewards for investing in...

Bicycle Level of Service: Proposed Updated Pavement Quality Index

Huang, Jiayun
Fournier, Nicholas
Skabardonis, Alexander
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board
2021

The Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) employs a simple five-point system to assess the quality of bikeway pavement as part of the comprehensive bicycle level of service (LOS) evaluation. Unfortunately, the ambiguous and rudimentary nature of the existing HCM Pavement Quality Index (PQI) fails to offer an objective review of bikeways across different jurisdictions. In the following analysis, first is an assessment of the PQI and bicycle LOS in the HCM. To demonstrate the impact of the pavement quality rating and the importance of a more standardized evaluation method, a sensitivity analysis is...

Development of Crash Reduction Factors for Bicycle-Related Safety Countermeasures

Grembeck, Offer
Griswold, Julia
University of California, Berkeley
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Highway Safety Research Center
2019

Developing quality California-specific crash modification factors (CMFs) for bicycle-related safety countermeasures will support practitioners in making more informed decisions about infrastructure improvement projects. The researchers identified a comprehensive list of countermeasures, identified existing CMFs and reviewed their quality and applicability to California, determined key bicycle injury and fatality crash patterns in the state, prioritized potential bicycle safety countermeasures for study, and identified potential study sites. The results show there is limited availability of...

Evaluate the Safety Effects of Adopting a Stop-as-Yield Law for Cyclists in California

Mahdinia, Iman
Griswold, Julia B.
Unda, Rafael
Sohrabi, Soheil
Grembek, Offer
2024

The escalating number of injuries and fatalities among cyclists is a pressing safety concern. In the United States, communities are actively seeking strategies to boost cyclist safety, with some states implementing bike-specific policies, such as stop-as-yield laws, to support cyclists. Stop-as-yield laws allow cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs. The laws are not yet widely implemented, and their potential safety impact is a subject of debate among transportation experts and advocates. This study investigates how stop-as-yield laws can positively or negatively affect safety and...

Methodology of Large-Scale Annual Average Daily Bicycle Traffic Estimation

Miah, Md Mintu
Griswold, Julia
Proulx, Frank
Bigham, John
Banerjee, Ipsita
Grembek, Offer
2025

AbstractLarge-scale bicycle network design, safety, and crash estimates largely depend on
network-wide bicycling volume estimation. Previous studies developed direct demand
models on a smaller scale (city or county) where bicycle count and. Practical ApplicationsAgencies often need to estimate bicycle volumes at the link level across entire networks
for planning, safety, and design purposes. This study uses expansion factors to introduce
a method for converting short-term site volume data.

Old Road, New Directions: Plan for Adeline Street in Berkeley, California

Griswold, Julia B.
Malinoff, Aaron
Frick, Karen Trapenberg
Deakin, Elizabeth
2011

This paper presents a plan for transforming a major arterial and a transit station that divide a low-income business and residential district into an economically healthy, context-sensitive, transit-oriented development. Adeline Street is a major point of entry into Berkeley, California, linking the city of Oakland on the south to the central districts of Berkeley. Formerly a major streetcar corridor, Adeline is now the location of a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station and a surface parking lot, for which housing and businesses were removed in the 1960s. The street's 180-ft right-of-way...

Pedestrian Count Expansion Methods: Bridging the Gap between Land Use Groups and Empirical Clusters

Medury, Aditya
Griswold, Julia B.
Huang, Louis
Grembek, Offer
2019

Count expansion methods are a useful tool for creating long-term pedestrian or cyclist volume estimates from short-term counts for safety analysis or planning purposes. Expansion factors can be developed based on the trends from automated counters set up for long periods of time. Evidence has shown that the activity patterns can vary between sites so that there is potential to create more accurate estimates by grouping similar long-term count trends into factor groups. There are two common approaches to developing factor groups in pedestrian and cyclist count expansion studies. The land...

A Data Science Framework for Planning the Growth of Bicycle Infrastructures

Olmos, Luis E.
Tadeo, Maria Sol
Vlachogiannis, Dimitris
Alhasoun, Fahad
Espinet Alegre, Xavier
Ochoa, Catalina
Targa, Felipe
González, Marta C.
2020

Cities around the world are turning to non-motorized transport alternatives to help solve congestion and pollution issues. This paradigm shift demands on new infrastructure that serves and boosts local cycling rates. This creates the need for novel data sources, tools, and methods that allow us to identify and prioritize locations where to intervene via properly planned cycling infrastructure. Here, we define potential demand as the total trips of the population that could be supported by bicycle paths. To that end, we use information from a phone-based travel demand and the trip distance...