Bicycling

The growth of bikesharing in the United States has had a transformative impact on urban transportation. Major cities have established large bikesharing systems, including Boston, Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, New York City, Salt Lake City, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Washington DC, and others. These systems began operating as early as 2010, and no fatalities have occurred within the US as of this writing. However, three have happened in North America—two in Canada and one in Mexico. Bikesharing has some qualities that appear inherently unsafe for bicyclists. Most...

Public bikesharing—the shared use of a bicycle fleet—is an innovative transportation strategy that has recently emerged in North America. Bikesharing systems typically position bicycles at docking stations for immediate access. Trips can be one-way or round-trip. As of January 2012, 15 information technology (IT)-based, public bikesharing systems had emerged in the United States—accounting for 172,070 users and 5,238 bicycles, and four IT-based programs accounted for 44,352 users and 6,235 bicycles in Canada. This study documents the state of public bikesharing in the U.S. and Canada and...

This paper describes how cities in developing countries often invest large sums to build highways and arterials serving a rapidly growing number of automobiles. Although highway investments are a priority, walking remains the most common mode of transport and buses (or motorbikes) the most common form of motor vehicle in use. The wide new arterials deliver short-term employment and construction spending benefits and in the longer term can contribute to increased productivity. On the other hand, their design and operation can reduce accessibility for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit...

This paper presents a case study of the use of San Francisco bike lanes with a focus on women. Bike counts and intercept surveys of cyclists at three locations in San Francisco’s SoMa District were complemented by focus groups with cyclists, particularly women cyclists, and brief interviews with non-cyclists. Consistent with other US studies, we find that white men are disproportionately represented among the cyclists we observed, and that women bike less and bike shorter distances. However, at least in the SoMa sample, women are more likely to bike to work than men. Cyclists included...