By Charles Pekow — Overlay a city street map and a cycling infrastructure map and you’ve got a tool to determine the need for more bike lanes. Researchers tried it in Paris and say the method can be used in other cities. “The proposed method can be applied with commonly available data, has clear outcomes, is reproducible, and can be applied to different case study areas,” concludes Where to Improve Cycling Infrastructure? Assessing Bicycle Suitability and Bikeability with Open Data in the City of Paris done by the University of Zurich (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590198222001099).
The study considered factors such as speed limits to determine suitability for cyclists. The study alsos acknowledged that it didn’t give adequate consideration to other factors such as intersections. They also note that politics, laws, and physical constraints get in the way of developing cycling infrastructure. The authors plan future research, such as how bikeshare is affecting use of existing infrastructure.
