Opponents of bike lanes are back with an analysis showing the safety measures cause more injuries
Bicyclists cross paths April 13, 2022, in North Cambridge. (Photo: Marc Levy)
An opponent of the bike-lane network being installed citywide released an analysis Monday saying the lanes have caused injuries to increase, with “2.5 times more cyclists and 3.5 times [more] motorist injuries” occurring on three street segments where separated bike lanes were installed.
The 14-page analysis uses publicly available police crash data, and “if anything, we’re undercounting injuries,” author John Hanratty said.
It looks at 1.3 miles of protected bike lanes, where bicyclists are separated from car traffic by plastic flex-posts and other means. On those stretches, there were 19 more injuries from before Covid to after installation in 2022, or a 158 percent increase, the report says, resulting in what Hanratty called “a limp or having to go to the hospital.”
Hanratty was part of a group called Cambridge Streets for All that filed a lawsuit last summer over the loss of parking space from the Cycling Safety Ordinance of 2019, which calls for 22.6 miles of bike lanes citywide. That lawsuit was rejected by a judge on March 27, but is being appealed. Other members of that group were on a closed call explaining the analysis, including Joan Pickett and John Pitkin, a former member of chair of the city’s Board of Traffic and Parking.
The report was sent Thursday to the City Council and Traffic, Parking and Transportation Department, the group said. A call was placed Monday to the department to see whether the report had been received and if officials there had comment, but there was no immediate reply. This report may be updated with staff or City Council comment.
Though his field is business consulting, Hanratty said he “went to three or four experts” who approved of his analysis, and that the results were consistent with those in other cities such as Denver – that separated bike lanes led to more injuries.
Bike advocates were contacted Monday and asked if they were aware of the findings. “It’s hard to directly evaluate this lengthy report without looking into the details of the data analysis further. However, its conclusions are at odds with professional consensus,” said Nate Fillmore, a co-founder of the Cambridge Bicycle Safety group.
“Of relevance, the Federal Highway Administration just released a report on the safety of protected bike lanes” that included Cambridge and found that “quick-build” lanes such as those in use in Cambridge “cut the risk of crash in half compared to regular bike lanes,” Fillmore said. Denver is also included, according to a technical summary of the February report.
That work was “conducted by professionals experienced with the data sources and methodology needed to correctly conduct a study of this sort,” Fillmore said, while he had concerns that the Cambridge Streets for All group was “amateurs with an agenda.”
The group said it welcomed feedback from the council and city transportation officials. Pickett encouraged councillors to “do their own analysis” and said there could be a moratorium on bike lanes “until they get a chance to look at what’s going on.”
People that “probably shouldn’t be biking are being coaxed” into using the lanes and putting themselves at risk, Hanratty said, and the group believes that a Cycling Safety Ordinance should pay more attention to safety. “We don’t want people to get hurt unnecessarily.”
Would the authors of the report release their data set? It’s impossible to validate their numbers without it.
With their clearly genuine concern over safety maybe the study authors would support a ban of cars from roads until we can figure out how to prevent the death and injury that they cause?
This study seems to comport with a recent (2022) article where we read that: “Jan Heine, editor-in-chief of Bicycle Quarterly, wrote, ‘Any barrier that separates the cyclist visually from other traffic effectively hides the cyclist. This is counterproductive to safety. Moving cyclists out of the roadway altogether, on separate bike paths, is even more dangerous, because drivers don’t look for (or cannot see) cyclists off to the side.’ He continued, ‘On streets with frequent intersections, separate paths only make cycling less safe. I wish those who advocate for them would look at the data and stop asking for facilities that will cause more accidents.’” https://www.forbes.com/sites/dianafurchtgott-roth/2022/09/08/bike-lanes-dont-make-cycling-safe/?sh=1451229e4ca8
Alright, so let’s all share the road. The new speed limit for cars is 15 mph.
If you go above 15 mph, the first time you lose your license for a year.
Second time, you lose your license forever and let’s bring back the pillory for good measure
in their own report they find that there was a 77% decrease in pedestrian injuries in the installation areas, then note that there was an 11% city wide increase outside of those areas. They then claim without basis other than a petition from businesses whose income depends on car traffic that there is less pedestrian traffic in these areas. Perhaps todays pedestrians don’t want to go to your store.
Here’s another explanation: spurious results due to very small sample sizes. Not one test statistic in this.
The comparisons in this study are suspect. The bike lanes were prioritized in the most dangerous road sections of the city with very high traffic volume.
Did more bicyclists reroute away from the rest of the city towards new bike lanes, causing no net change in volume but local increases? We will never know because this study is an amateur study conducted by people with an agenda who don’t know what they’re doing.
This report is very funny (as long as no one takes it seriously). It reads like something I would have written as an early high school “data analysis” project when I had free time on my hands and wanted to feel smart. It’s good at making its clearly intended point, but it is riddled with bias and is extremely amateurish in how it uses the data.
-Cherry picking 1.3 miles of bike lanes when substantially more have been built
-Not using bike count data from those exact areas
-Just looking at totals instead of rates, when we know that these lanes would have made people significantly more likely to bike
-Using 2022 crash data for Porter Square when the new lanes were installed halfway through the year
-Not acknowledging potential changes to reporting veracity for counts of accidents from 2019 to 2022
-Not controlling for any change in driver behavior such as speeding, crashes, ignoring red lights, etc., which anecdotally have increased notably since 2020
Anyways, I would encourage anyone to read the Federal Highway Administration report which as mentioned above, included Cambridge in the study.
That would be “the consensus of professional bike advocates” right Nate.
And for those crying for the data, read the report, download the data, it is all there, crunch away folks.
So an amateur with obvious ideological bias came to their predetermined conclusion by cherrypicking data . Color me shocked.
Watch out Cambridge Day. By publishing this nonsense you could Fox News and this could be your Dominion scandal lol
As an avid cyclist, I’ll take my chances with the bike lanes. Sorry Mr. Hanratty, it just doesn’t have cred.
In my opinion, the many miles of bike lanes that have built in Cambridge and Boston have made it much safer to commute by bike. I appreciate it very much.
In today’s shocking new, anti-bike litigator cherry picks data and discovers that it supports his position!
I like many of the bike lanes, but seriously, I don’t see any other way to slice or juke the stats than these segments correlate with more accidents. Correlation does not equal causation and all of that, but numbers are numbers.
That said, I would like to see the data from other places where the lanes have been built. Hopefully the city will look into it.
^ q99, the authors didn’t do tests for statistical significance for any of this. They found nonsensical results like 80% decreases in pedestrian injuries. They didn’t control for changes in traffic volume. They didn’t control for danger between the bike segments and the “control.” They cherry picked a very small amount of the total bike lanes.
There are many reasons why these results probably don’t even add up to correlation.
This “study” has major flaws. The results cannot be trusted.
The literature review is selective and overlooks numerous studies showing that protected bike lanes improve safety.
The study focuses on absolute crash numbers instead of rates per mile traveled. That is a fatal flaw. Accident numbers will increase as traffic increases. You need to take that into account. This report did not.
Their use of the city as a statistical control is flawed; a quasi-experimental design with explicit controls is necessary.
The statistical analysis is incomplete. It lacks a crucial denominator.
In short, this study’s unprofessionalism makes it unlikely to pass peer review in a reputable journal.
I am sure the Cambridge City planners will see right through this nonsense.
@Williard
The author of that Forbes article advocates an extremist view that most cyclists reject.
The author advocates Effective Cycling, the philosophy that bikes should be like cars. They should ride down the middle of the lane in any lane they want.
Is that what drivers want? to be behind cyclists riding in the middle of the road?
The claims from that Forbes article has been debunked by decades of research showing that bike lanes dramatically improve safety for ALL road users, including drivers.
@q99
They looked at changes in the number of accidents. That is a non-starter. You need to look at accident rates per mile so that you take into account changes in traffic volume. The numbers they used are meaningless.
They used percentages to hide the small effects. A change of 200% sounds huge, that is until you realize that it was a change from 1 to 3.
The report lacks any statistical tests to show that any of these effects are real.
There is more but the above is enough to render this study useless.
The headline “Opponents of bike lanes are back with an analysis showing the safety measures cause more injuries” is inaccurate; the “analysis”shows no such thing. Less credulous headlines, please!
There are *a lot* of problems with this, but maybe the most glaring is that it cites reported bike injuries as a percent of all reported injuries in the city. That’s just not a relevant figure if your goal is to determine the effect of separated bike lanes on rider safety. The proper metric would be injuries per bike mile traveled, because it would account for the increase in biking.
Bad analysis aside, Hanratty’s claim that some people “shouldn’t be biking” is at odds with the city’s clearly expressed goal from 2020: “The Bicycle Plan lays out a vision for where we as a City want to be, with the guiding principle to enable people of all ages, abilities, and identities to bike safely and comfortably throughout Cambridge.” It’s a good goal, and kudos to the city for pursuing it undeterred by this latest nonsense.
The only thing we learned from this “study” is that John Hanratty and the so-called “reviewers” should not ever get near data again. They have no idea what they are doing.
I took a few urban geography classes in college. These guys made egregious errors. Their analyses are totally bogus. They made pretty much every mistake you can make with this type of data.
They used the wrong measures and the wrong controls. They overly narrowed the focus of the data analyses, which is a sign that they were “cooking the books” to get the answer they wanted.
“Amateurs with an agenda” is spot on.
I would like to see a study of how many bicyclists actually stop for a red light vs. those who ride right through the light. From what I can tell, an occasional cyclist will stop and wait for a green light. Some will give a slight pause and then proceed through; but most don’t pause at all. That includes the special lights that are designated for cyclists.
Most Bikers DO NOT follow the rules!!!! I’ve been hit by one and they fly by, even on sidewalks!!!!!!!
Terrible headline, Cambridge Day/Marc Levy.
At best, you could say the report “purports to show” or “analysis they claim shows” accurately.
I request a correction.