Research Papers (2009 – 2013)

Abstract

This paper presents a control-case study to determine the relative cyclist injury risk of bicycle facilities with respect to streets without bicycle provisions, and to explore the differences in cyclist injury risk between different types of facilities, namely, cycle-tracks and bicycle lanes. The cyclist injury rates for a set of four cycle tracks and four bicycle lanes in the City of Montreal are compared to injury rates for corresponding control streets using relative risk ratios. In addition, the injury rates for the bicycle facilities are compared to each other. Overall, it was found that most bicycle facilities in the analysis do indeed exhibit lower cyclist injury rates than the corresponding control streets. Furthermore, factors that may explain some of the variation in injury risk between different facilities include whether or not a given facility is bidirectional, visibility, presence and location of parking, vehicular traffic and the roadway’s built environment. However, further research is required to determine the exact effect of these factors.

Thomas Nosal, Luis F. Miranda-Moreno, Anne C. Lusk, Patrick Morency