Help Finding News Article from last week?

[Godfather]

Hey all, not sure if this is the best place or if anyone will be able to help me buuuut I can't find something that I read and found fascinating. (My history at work was already deleted)

It was an online news article, I'm 99% sure it was a UK source. It was sometime last week, somewhere in the range of August 1st-7th.

What it was was an article about a study which found cyclist lanes and the dividers actually cause drivers to be complacent and cause more accidents with cyclists. It mentioned that a bridge had already taken down these dividers and seen a reduction in collisions by 2.5 times and another neighborhood was considering it.

Found it really neat and told a friend who wants to read it, but now I can't find it even after an hour of searching Google News (which I originally found the article last week)

Not sure if anyone saw or knows about this article/the related study... but any help would be GREATLY appreciated

Cheers

[Griffin]

Can't help with finding the article, but if you want to discuss the all to common practice of condensing motor vehicle lanes to make room for cyclist lanes in most municipalities I'd be more than happy to pipe in.

[Loser]

Couldn't find the news article, but this was a fun read.

Only registered members can view code.

[AntZ]

This?

______________________________


UBC professor Kay Teschke lauds Vancouver's separated bike lanes
Publish Date: August 3, 2011



A professor claims that her latest research on cycling injuries refutes the conclusion of a city-staff report that “there is insufficient collision data” to assess how safe the downtown separated bike lanes are for cyclists.

“In that [July 20] report, they were able to get data from ICBC from motor-vehicle crashes, [concluding] that they felt that there were far fewer motor-vehicle crashes along those corridors,” Kay Teschke, a professor in UBC’s school of population and public health, told the Straight by phone on August 2. “But they said they couldn’t draw any conclusions about bicycling injuries.”
{sidebar title='See also'}

City staff recommend Dunsmuir, Hornby separated bike lanes stay until at least 2012
{/sidebar}

However, at the July 28 meeting of city council’s planning and environment committee, Teschke said that data she has collected—and submitted for peer review—shows that “separated bike lanes were the safest of the 14 route types” in the Bicyclists’ Injuries and the Cycling Environment study she and her group completed.

In his report, transportation director Jerry Dobrovolny noted that ICBC collision data pertaining to cyclists is “infrequent” and that, although overall accidents on Dunsmuir Street went down “noticeably”, there was no data to conclude that the separated lanes unequivocally resulted in safer cycling conditions.

Teschke reminded council that her study did not look at the two separated bike lanes; it studied injuries between May 2008 and November 2009, before the Hornby and Dunsmuir separated lanes were built.

“However, we were able to examine separated bike lanes elsewhere in the city, including Burrard Bridge, Carrall Street, and other locations that met our definition: that is, a paved path alongside city streets that’s separated from traffic by a physical barrier,” Teschke told councillors. “The study showed that separated bike lanes were the safest of the 14 route types that we studied, including those on arterials, collectors, local streets, and off-street. The highest-risk route type was major city streets with parked cars and no bike facilities. In comparison, separated lanes had a nine-times-lower risk. Separated lanes were also safer than painted bike lanes, with a four- to six-times-lower risk.”

In earlier research, Teschke said her research group found that separated bike lanes are a route type that men and women of all ages and cycling experience prefer to ride on.

“Now there is evidence that this route type is also safer,” she said.

Source URL: http://www.straight.com/article-4151...ted-bike-lanes

[AntZ]

Or this?


__________________________________________


Bike-only lanes cut injury rates

Last updated: Friday, February 18, 2011




Cyclists using special bike-only track, such as the newly opened bicycle lane in Cape Town, that are physically separated from street traffic have fewer accidents compared to bikers pedalling alongside motor vehicles, a new study finds.

"We found that there is a 28% lower injury rate when bicycling on cycle tracks, compared with bicycling in parallel and comparable roads," noted study lead author Anne Lusk, a research associate in the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

"Of course, intersections do have to be well-designed, ideally with red and green bicycle signals," Lusk added. "And even then, we're not suggesting that cycle tracks have zero risk. But rigorous research does show that the difference in the accident rate is real."

Lusk and her team report their findings in the journal Injury Prevention.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, about 51,000 American cyclists suffered injuries as a result of encounters with motor vehicles in 2009, with such accidents accounting for two percent of all traffic fatalities in the United States (according to 2008 figures).

Bike lanes encourage more people to cycle

So it's not surprising that surveys have consistently shown that many cyclists - particularly women, seniors, and parents who cycle with their children - are afraid of pedalling on traffic-heavy roads.

Although designated bike lanes kept wholly separate from the road are a common feature in many other countries, they remain a relatively rare phenomenon in the United States. In the US bike lanes typically consist of merely a painted stripe on the pavement delineating cyclists' portion of the road.

In contrast, the Netherlands - a country half the size of South Carolina, with just under 17 million residents - is home to about 18,000 miles of separate cycle tracks, the researchers noted. By comparison, across the entire US only about 20 miles of similar bike-only tracks are currently in place, mainly in centres such as New York City, Portland, Ore., and Seattle.

In their study, Lusk and her team focused on the safety profile of the urban bike lane system first set up two decades ago in Montreal, Canada.

Cycle tracks cut down on cycling accidents

Injury and crash rates for six cycle tracks in Montreal were compared with one or two alternative street routes per track. Tracks and alternate streets (which lacked biking lanes) were characterised as posing similar "traffic dangers" to riders in terms of the type, number, and speed of cars on the road.

All the cycle tracks featured two-way cycle traffic (going both with vehicular traffic and against it) on one side of the road, from which they were separated by raised pavement, parking lanes, and/or posts. Most of the alternate streets ran parallel to the cycle track roads, and came to the same end-point intersections as the tracks.

Local emergency response and police records were used to assess injury and crash occurrences between 2000 and 2008. Injury severity was not assessed.

The study found that 2.5 times as many bikers used the cycle tracks compared with street routes without separated bike lanes. But even with the increase in bike congestion, injury rates on the cycle tracks remained either lower than or similar to equivalent street routes, depending on the particular track.

And when they looked at all the cycle tracks together, the research team pegged the overall relative risk of injury as 28% lower on the separated tracks versus biking on a street in traffic.

"Based on the lower relative safety risk, we think that the construction of cycle tracks should not be discouraged," Lusk said.

People feel 'safer' on cycling tracks

Susan Finn, chairwoman of the American Council for Fitness & Nutrition in Washington, DC said Lusk's findings "all make sense," given that the focus should be on encouraging, rather than discouraging, the biking habit.

"I'm not necessarily talking about those people who are tremendous athletes with great skills who can perhaps handle sharing the road with cars," Finn noted. "I'm talking about those who would likely feel safer in a separated bike path, and therefore be more likely to actually get out and go biking in that kind of environment."

"So if what we want is to motivate people to be active and safe, regardless of the level of expertise, then it seems to me that a designated cycle path would really serve the majority of people we want to see getting out there," she added. "Those who maybe aren't the jocks but who want to engage in purposeful activity."


http://www.health24.com/news/Fitness/1-911,61151.asp#

[AntZ]

The Sun: ‘Ottawa wrong to favour cyclists’


kris.westwood - July 5th, 2011



As the city debates the latest infrastructure improvements to make life a little easier for cyclists, the predictable backlash is happening in the predictable places.

The city’s transportation committee is recommending the addition of “bike boxes” at some downtown intersections, which would set aside space at traffic lights for bicycles, forcing cars to stop a little bit earlier and making right turns illegal on some red lights.

Predictably, this is being framed in this Ottawa Sun editorial as the city “unduly favouring cyclists over motorists.”

“As if the Laurier bike lane wasn’t concern for alarm, the introduction of bike boxes definitely is,” the editorial states.

Setting aside the alarmist tone, how are motorists being unduly dissed by this initiative? Cars already have virtually exclusive rights to the vast majority of the downtown core that doesn’t have a building sitting on it, and roads suck up the biggest single chunk of the city’s infrastructure budget — which, by the way, we all pay for through property taxes, even those of us who don’t own a car.

And yet it’s somehow acceptable that 26 people died and 4,000 were injured on Ottawa roads in 2009 alone (the last year I could find stats for). So we spend the biggest chunk of money on making it easier for people drive their cars — the thing that’s the leading cause of accidental death in most age groups.

To say this small initiative is a cause for alarm is narrow minded and petty.

But it’s not surprising.

Any change produces a reaction and, as we saw with the recent election of Rob Ford as Toronto mayor and his distaste for cycling infrastructure or, closer to home, Larry O’Brien’s 2006 cancellation of the north-south light rail line, that reaction can destroy some hard-won gains.

So as much as I applaud the city’s apparent enthusiasm for cycling infrastructure projects, perhaps we should pace them a little better. This year we have the segregated bike lane on Laurier, the Bixi bike share program and a pilot bike box project. I think they’re all great, but I can also appreciate that some people think we’re doing too much, too quickly — and as a consequence I’m worried about the resulting backlash that could lead to the cancellation of all the projects after the next municipal election.

Meanwhile, please, please everyone out there riding your bikes, obey the traffic laws. The vast majority of negative comments on cyclists focus on the minority of scofflaws who run red lights, go the wrong way on one-way streets and ride on the sidewalks. Yesterday, as I rode up Wellington St. in Westboro, some twit on a bike ran every single red light while I stopped at each one, and he even jumped on the sidewalk to get around stopped traffic. He ended up gaining a grand total of 50 metres on me at the cost of the reputation of all cyclists and the resulting threat to my personal safety.

Now, if only we could get drivers to stop talking on their cellphones (I saw at least two while driving my wife to the airport this morning) and get cabbies to actually signal their turns sometimes …


http://blogs.canoe.ca/spokesman/comm...vour-cyclists/

[Pony]

Nice work Antz! Hope one of those is what he was after.

[Yt Trash]

This has some relevance to the subject. No bike lane.

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/127064188.html

[Godfather]

That's good stuff, thanks Anth Hope that wasn't too much work


Unfortunately I still haven't found the article I read the other day

[PorkChopSandwiches]

How about this?
http://www.londonskaters.com/cycling...ycle-lanes.htm

[Godfather]

No, another good one but not quite Sorry guys.. don't mean to be a pain

[Teh One Who Knocks]

Damn pains in the butt