Studying the economic effects of bike lanes has been slower than Cambridge during rush hour, but the City Council added more areas of study Monday anyway, reflecting newer arguments around whether having bike lanes is safer than having none.
The motion calls for two committees and city staff to come together around reviewing the lanes’ “effectiveness and develop recommendations on methods to collect data and establish measurable benchmarks and standards as it relates to the Cycling Safety Ordinance,” a 2019 law that calls for nearly 25 miles of protected lanes citywide.
A version was introduced a week ago by councillor Paul Toner but put on hold by councillor Burhan Azeem, who proposed changes this week with councillor Marc McGovern adding that the order “is not meant to delay CSO projects” and eliminating a reference to groups that have been most critical of the lanes. It was to “clarify the intention” and “be a little bit more neutral,” Azeem said.
Toner supported the changes, revealing that he’d come in for criticism from bicyclists worried about a potential moratorium on adding lanes during a study. “Reach out to me directly,” Toner suggested.
The new version passed 7-1-1, with councillor Quinton Zondervan opposed. (Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui was absent from the meeting.) “I don’t understand the need,” Zondervan said. “We collect lots of data. We have lots of hearings on that and we should continue to do that. But I don’t think we need to collect separate additional data around the CSO.”
Already a study
It was just last month that residents and councilors were expressing frustration over the limitations of data gathering, as Toner chaired an Economic Development Committee hearing around city staff efforts to look at the economic impact of bike lanes.
The results were limited, as staff had been frustrated in finding useful data in the face of state privacy issues and had struggled to find a consultant, only recently partnering with the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Kendall Square. And that was since McGovern wrote and won unanimous support for an economic study in February 2022.
Toner called the work so far “not perfect, but it’s a start.” Councillor Patty Nolan expressed more alarm: “This policy order passed more than a year ago,” Nolan said, “and we’re just now getting a little bit of data.” Pardis Saffari, the city’s director of economic opportunity and development, said a fuller report could be expected in the fall.
But as the opponents of bike lanes have struggled in court to turn around the CSO, they have found reason to change tactics.
More dangerous than traffic
Complaints about the effect of separated bike lanes on businesses, seniors and the disabled have focused for years around the parking spots that may be lost when the lanes are added to narrow roads. More recently there are allegations that they are more dangerous than having bicyclists riding in traffic, though progress on bike lanes in Cambridge sped up after a series of bicyclist deaths.
The studies, statistics and conflicting versions of common sense have played out in essays and comments published in the media, starting with an April 14 report by members of Cambridge Streets for All – one of the groups that tried suing the city to undo progress on the CSO.
People that “probably shouldn’t be biking are being coaxed” into using the lanes and putting themselves at risk, author John 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.”
Nate Fillmore, a co-founder of the Cambridge Bicycle Safety group, said he was concerned that the group was “amateurs with an agenda” and pointed them to an approving recent Federal Highway Administration report on the safety of protected bike lanes.
That work was “conducted by professionals experienced with the data sources and methodology needed to correctly conduct a study of this sort,” Fillmore said.
The story drew nearly two dozen comments of back-and-forth around the validity of the analysis and related topics.
Facts under fire
Cambridge Bicycle Safety responded in May with an essay by advocate Itamar Turner-Trauring saying it was “no surprise Cambridge roads are getting safer” and turning again to the federal study of data from Cambridge and four other cities, as well as state guidelines from 2015 that said “separated bike lanes improve safety for all road users.” Turner-Trauring included graphics showing “a stark reduction from 2016 levels in crashes resulting in emergency medical transports” as the lanes were installed, seemingly corroborated by police data.
It drew more than two dozen comments, many of them further analyses, and a response in kind this month from Serenus Hua – who said he was not a litigant against the CSO – that critiqued Turner-Trauring’s analysis and suggested flaws in the federal study. In the 26 comments that followed, it was Hua’s turn to be evaluated for his work.
“This is why you don’t just spend five minutes opening an excel spreadsheet to analyze data,” Turner-Trauring said, citing flaws behind his citing of his work’s flaws.
Hua’s response: “Your understanding of statistics needs a bit of work,” as explanations of how to interpret “standard error would be problematic in most situations, but is especially incorrect in the context of the FHA study, which uses a Poisson regression …”
And so on.
Flaw in the figures
“I feel trapped in this pingpong game,” Toner said Tuesday, explaining the motivations for his order. “I want our traffic department to say ‘These are the things we see that people who passed the CSO intended – like increasing number of people riding and decreasing auto traffic – but we don’t have any real numbers. I don’t think we should be citing national or international reports; we have the ability and resources to measure it in Cambridge. And I can bring these numbers to the people who are opposed and say ‘It’s working,’ or I can say to the bike people, ‘You say you want people to be safer, and they’re not.”
McGovern, co-sponsor of Monday’s amendments and the author of the February 2022 call for economic analysis, said before the night’s vote that he wasn’t afraid of the information that would be gathered – “I think the data is going to show that that that installing bike lanes is a good thing.”
Later, after the meeting, he acknowledged a flaw in the order and in his expectations.
“People can use data any way they want,” McGovern said. “I’m not sure how the data, whichever way it falls, is going to convince anybody to change their opinion.”
This post was updated June 13, 2023, with comment from city councillor Paul Toner. It was updated June 18, 2023, to add that Serenus Hua said he was not a litigant against the Cycling Safety Ordinance and correct gender references.
A stronger
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The dedicated bike lanes work for cyclists, and especially children or inexperienced cyclists still learning to ride Cambridge streets.
I do see the parking brigade’s point; I drive in Cambridge too and lament the loss of street parking. But we routinely had cyclists getting killed in traffic accidents before the lanes, and I see much less of that now.
The lanes should stay, and we should be looking for ways to lay down more– thoughtfully and respectfully, aware that cycling isn’t the only way people need to get around town; but more.
Which side has more credibility? It’s really hard to judge. On one side we have a group presenting FHWA studies, countless studies from peer cities, and supported by modern traffic engineering standards. On the other side we have the same people that oppose all change in our city, file meritless lawsuits, and claim that bike lanes are a conspiracy to put small businesses out to make way for developers.
Readers with a historical bent might enjoy this book covering how political calculations became part of British (and therefor colonial American) culture after the Glorious Restoration, leading to some of the cultural attitudes we have towards numbers: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674971875
Side note: pretty sure that final quote from Hua was responding to someone’s else’s critique, I didn’t mention standard deviation. That part was a very Cantabrigian argument, though!
The CSFA study was a joke that no expert will ever take seriously. They made fundamental errors like not taking into account changes in traffic patterns and not using accident rates. That is basic stuff. Making those mistakes shows that they are truly “amateurs with agendas”.
The recent letter by Hua (who was involved in the CSFA study) is equally flawed. There is no logic to his argument that variability in the data means that some bike lanes are not safe. All data has variability. It does not follow that some bike lanes are always bad. There is no logic there.
I’ll note that the CSFA study did not use the fine-grained street by street metrics and controls needed to properly study bike lanes. Now, Hua’s letter turns that around to argue that we need to study every inch of every bike lane. The hypocrisy is head-spinning.
This “we need more data” is just a stalling technique. It is a classic scheme to try to kill projects that you don’t like. “Wait, we need more. Always more”.
We have all the data we need. Bike lanes have been proven to improve safety all over the world, including here in Cambridge. There are hundreds of bike lane success stories: London, Paris, NYC, etc. In all of these places, bike lanes have been shown to reduce accidents by a substantial degree.
We don’t need more data.
What we need is for a vocal minority to stop trying to thwart the will of the majority. Bike lanes have wide public support in Cambridge.
Every delay these people manage to insert puts more lives at risk.
Oops, should’ve said Glorious Revolution.
@multimodal. Which side has more credibility? Let’s see.
On the one side we have dozens and dozens of studies by professionals who are highly educated and trained and conduct this type of research for a living. They say bike lanes dramatically reduce accidents.
On the other side, we have some “amateurs with an agenda” who have sued to stop the bike lanes. They issued a deeply flawed study and now a letter that also contains flaws and highly questionable leaps of logic.
Hmm. I’m going to go with the educated and trained pros who aren’t in a lather about finding a parking spot on Mass Ave.
The hypocrisy is head-spinning. In his recent letter to CD, Serenus Hua used a measure of variability, standard error, to support a (flawed) argument that not all bike lanes are safe.
Then, in *this* article he says, “standard error would be problematic in most situations, but is especially incorrect in the context of the FHA study, which uses a Poisson regression”
Standard error is OK when he uses it but it is incorrect when others use it????
Indeed, someone’s understanding of statistics needs a bit of work.
@multimodal, totally agree. One one side we have the Federal Highway Safety Administration, as well as many other studies that have been appropriately vetted. The FHSA being about as impartial as an entity can be in this case.
On the other side we have an amateurish propaganda piece by a group that has been vocally anti-bike lanes for years, and has initiated multiple lawsuits against the city.
Gee, I wonder which side is more credible? Again, WHY is CambridgeDay giving these people space to peddle their conspiracy theories and propaganda?
Toner seems confused about the Cycling Safety Ordinance. The goal was _safety_ of people currently biking. It was based on pre-existing research, and state guidelines (https://www.mass.gov/lists/separated-bike-lane-planning-design-guide cites the research).
That’s why the metric is “build this many miles in this many years”: the problem was known, the solution was known, the metric is applying the solution.
Increasing ridership was a secondary goal, but it’s not fundamental: all the people biking _right now_ deserve to be safe. People were _already_ dying and being injured.
And Toner saying “I don’t think we should be citing national or international reports; we have the ability and resources to measure it in Cambridge” is either disingenuous or ignorant. We have a Federal Highway Administration report that literally looked at Cambridge, and came out at 2023 (https://highways.dot.gov/sites/fhwa.dot.gov/files/FHWA-HRT-23-025.pdf). But somehow this isn’t good enough for Toner, perhaps because it’s not the conclusion he wants.
Itamar Turner-Trauring, of course not. He’s beholden to the whining business interests that literally can’t get our of their own way to realize their antiquated ideas about parking and traffic are hurting their businesses.
Prior to this I never would have given Violette a second look, now I make sure every single person I know is informed of the actions of this business owner, and their similarly minded colleagues. I look forward to these businesses being replaced with more locally focused open minded alternatives.
I work in statistics and machine learning and allowing Hua’s “analysis” to be published is an embarrassment to this publication.
This whole article is another Trumpian “both sides are right.” Why is there even a discussion over whether a federal statistical analysis is more reliable than an amateur group with no professional training and an agenda? FFS
@cambridgeresident
I totally agree. I have a higher degree and work in computation and data analytics. Hua’s analysis is superficial and flawed.
Among many other flaws, you can’t take multivariate data and just narrow the focus down to the isolated bits that fit your narrative. Everything I’ve seen (including the CSFA) is sophomoric.
It is stunning that people think such amateurish hooey is better professional work by federal scientists. Wow. Sad.
@shedrovemehere +100
On the one side, we have impartial federal scientists, highly trained experts in examining this type of data.
On the other side, we have some local amateurs who have, as far as anyone can tell, no experience whatsoever.
The experts say bike lanes reduce accidents. The amateurs say no. Who do you think is right, the experts or the amateurs?
Cambridge Day has to stop publishing drivel in their Letters section. Disinformation does not help anyone.
It’s worse than drivel, it’s targeted misinformation intended to sway sentiment away from a popular program that businesses don’t like. Maybe it’s time to write an “opinion letter” shining a light on the businesses that are participating in this farce?
@shedrovemehere Agreed. Intended disinformation by people with an agenda. Worse than incompetence.
@Itamar Turner-Trauring +1 Does Toner think we should not protect people who are already cycling? What matters are increases? Is the current level of death and injuries acceptable?
Toner’s “we do not need anyone else’s data” is also inane and disingenuous. The laws of physics are the same everywhere. Does he really believe that data from other cities is not relevant? Give me a break.
Toner is just saying that because he doesn’t like the answers from other cities. He gives that away by ignoring the results from the FHA study showing a reduction in accidents. That was conducted here. I guess that is inconvenient.
As someone else said, “we need more data” is what people say whenever they want to kill a project. That is so transparent.
@AvgJoe To be fair, sometimes “we need less data” is how people try to kill projects. E.g. Hanratty asked people yesterday to write to the council asking them to vote _against_ doing a demographic survey of the golf course members. Hanratty’s stated motivation is that he doesn’t want the golf course to be turned into affordable housing.
@Itamar Turner-Trauring. Surely. But in this case, their agenda is clear. It’s never enough data Delay, delay, delay.
Hey Marc Levy, have you considered consulting with someone who actually knows something about statistics and how to analyze city data?
Maybe then you wouldn’t publish such nonsense.
Spreading disinformation is irresponsible journalism.
I don’t think there’s any issue with Marc Levey’s journalism here. This piece is just a summary, I don’t think you should read into it any more than that. The issue is with those who are presenting the misleading data and poorly researched opinion pieces.
@multimodal
I agree. It is hard to fault the reporter on this one. Marc Levy is just reporting the news.
But it’s a shame that Hua and the CSFA crew get any attention at all. Their analyses are really laughable. They pick a few numbers out of context just to fit their agenda. Their analyses are just propaganda.
@AvgJoe and @multimodal
Fair enough. It is not Marc Levey’s fault that people are spreading disinformation. It is sad that people take this amateur stuff seriously and think it is somehow superior to professional work by professionals.
These comments are a total pile on of bikers who fear real statistics from Cambridge and only Cambridge because they might reveal flaws in the CSO. The city needs to responsibly gather full data and report back, then we will know what the data says. Until then, Stop the sniping.
@NC Walker. No, that is not the situation.
We already have plenty of data from literally dozens of cities, including here in Cambridge. It all shows the same thing: Bike lanes reduce accidents.
These guys want us to disregard all that evidence and instead accept their amateurish “cooking” of the data to suit their anti-bike lane agenda.
There is a ton of evidence that shows they are wrong. The problem is not a lack of data.
@NC Walker. @AvgJoe is correct. We already know the answer. Bike lanes have been proven to reduce accidents. There have been plenty of studies. This includes a recent study by the Federal Highway Administration (FHA), right here in Cambridge.
Hua and the CSFA are anti-bike lanes and refuse to accept that. So, they used fallacious arguments and flawed stats to come to conclusions that are at odds with every other study.
This group filed a lawsuit to stop the bike lanes. That is a huge conflict of interest! Doesn’t it strike you as odd that this group somehow manages to find the results they want when everyone else found the opposite?
If they really wanted to know the truth, they could commission a study by professionals without an agenda and without a conflict of interest.
We already have the data and the answer. What Hua and CSFA are doing is propaganda.
Here’s an article (and link to a study) that shows that crashes between motor vehicles and cars are underreported.
The authors’ recommendation? Protected bike lanes.
Is Cycling Safe? We shouldn’t take no for an answer, researcher says
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/is-cycling-safe-in-many-cases-the-answer-is-no/
Note: this is an actual peer-reviewed scientific study. Not the cooked-up nonsense from “amateurs with an agenda”
My bad. My previous post should have said “between motor vehicles and bikes”, not cars.
Repost with correction.
Here’s an article (and link to a study) that shows that crashes between motor vehicles and bikes are underreported.
The authors’ recommendation? Protected bike lanes.
Is Cycling Safe? We shouldn’t take no for an answer, researcher says
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/is-cycling-safe-in-many-cases-the-answer-is-no/
Note: this is an actual peer-reviewed scientific study. Not the cooked-up nonsense from “amateurs with an agenda”
@ncwalker Yep. All the usual suspects. The comments are pointless because they just rally their troops to pile on.
@FrankD I’m not sure if you’re talking about the same CSFA study, because they’re quoting public data from the police department’s accident reports. I’m not accusing you of false information, because they did not publicize that fact well.
Now I agree that the CSFA’s lawsuit was flawed and doomed to fail. It was too overzealous, ambitious, and verbose, but the study does have some merit as it’s the only recent, infrastructure- focused impact study concerning the bike lanes.
The whole “bike lanes worked well in X city, Y city, and they’ll work here” is only good as a pitch argument, it is not an action plan. You cannot fully criticize the CSFA study for lack of quality because City officials themselves have acknowledged the difficulty in collecting the requisite data.
I’m a resident living on Porter extension, and I am confident in saying they implemented the extension very poorly over here. Most of the Traffic is diverted through the side roads, which are rows of houses with parallel parking. It’s a disaster every morning.
I do look forward to the Main street extension, as main street is an industrial zone and has the road, sidewalk space to accommodate the lane easily.
@AvgJoe That’s a really good, high quality article. Unfortunately, it is largely off the topic at hand as it mainly focuses on health benefits and our physiological dimorphic traits.
The relavant studies it quotes are from 2015, and 2011 so the stats are becoming dated.
Since both you and the article you posted highlight the discrepancies of police records, and that the real number is higher, that is all the reason to take the CSFA study more seriously as it uses our publically available police data.
The quoted article towards the end is absolutely correct, bicyclists are safer after implementation of protected bike lanes. However, we’re overlooking that their effectiveness is contingent on proper, conscientious implementation, which is what’s being disputed here in Cambridge.
The debate over this data is tiring. It shouldn’t matter. How does it make sense for a city as dense as Cambridge *not* to have cycling infrastructure?
More data would be great. We should get it if we can. But the quest for more data can become a resource drain and can go on infinitely. Sometimes it won’t be possible to gather conclusive data at a granular level, so decisions have to be made without sufficient data. Building more cycling infrastructure is the right decision.
@DanZ I agree, this debate over data is pretty tiring, and you’re right that it can be a time and resource drain. However, that is why it’s crucial to collect this data early on, and before plans move forward as to not waste even more time, money, and resources. This is one of the chief complaints of the plaintiffs.
The old adage “Measure twice, cut once” is applicable here, and I’m concerned the pro-lane advocates have ignored its moral. Yes, we may not be able to collect totally perfect data, and it may add time and cost, but there’s no excuse to forgo accuracy and properness in exchange for faster results. Especially with such a widely-impactful and desperately needed change in our civil infrastructure.
The CSO affects more people than just the would-be bicyclists, and I’m disappointed many of the pro-advocates refuse to acknowledge this. Had there been a better attempt at constructive dialogue rather than destructive attacks, and had the City committed to following proper procedure, I’m sure we’d be closer towards safe, effective bike infrastructure by now.