Riding on the open road can be a scary scenario for some bicyclists, even in Oregon, which has been touted by Virgin Atlantic Airways as the second most bike-friendly destination in the world.
“Whenever there’s not a bike lane, I always get honked at or cars will purposefully swerve closer to me just to scare me, I guess,” said Nick Jacobs, a University environmental science major. “I definitely think bike lanes are important, because cars don’t generally respect bicyclists when they’re on the same street. I think cyclists need the bike lanes to even justify riding anywhere, because people will get pissed if you’re riding on the regular street.”
Even in Eugene, where there are about 30 miles of off-street paths, 89 miles of on-street bicycle lanes and bicycle-pedestrian bridges spanning the Willamette River, these feelings still resonate among those who primarily commute by bicycle.
“I’d say in general, I think Eugene is pretty bike-friendly and has enough bike lanes to get around, especially around the University,” Jacobs said. “Although, once you get outside of the campus area, it’s gets a little bit more precarious. Things are a lot farther apart and it’s a lot scarier; if you try to bike down West 11th with all of these cars going past you, that’s terrifying.”
However, there may be solutions to this problem. According to a recent Harvard Medical School study, the implementation of cycle tracks, physically segregated bike lanes that provide barriers between vehicle traffic and bicyclists, rather than painted bike lanes, may lessen bicycle-related injuries.
Anne Lusk, a nutrition research associate at Harvard University’s School of Public Health who co-authored the study, said bicyclists in Montreal who used cycle tracks had a 28 percent lower injury rate in comparison to those who chose to bike on public roads throughout the city.
Although Lusk said the results “were not significant,” she noted that the “barrier-protected, bicycle-exclusive cycle tracks were safer in comparison to bicycling in the road without bicycling position.”
Beyond the reduction of bicycle-related injuries, Lusk said the implementation of cycle tracks also encourages more people to commute by bicycle. In fact, nearly 2.5 times as many cyclists used the cycle tracks instead of biking on the roads, according to the study.
Despite the high costs associated with creating cycle tracks, Lusk said it may be instrumental in reducing the nation’s high rate of bicycle-related accidents in comparison to other countries. In 2008 alone, 716 cyclists were killed in the United States and an additional 52,000 were injured in traffic crashes, which accounted for two percent of all traffic fatalities and two percent of all the people injured in traffic crashes during the year, according to data provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
In comparison, the study reported the Netherlands, which has one of the highest rates of bicycle use in the world, has about 18,000 miles of separate cycle tracks. Only several cities in the U.S., including New York City, Portland, Ore., and Seattle, have implemented similar cycle tracks that run nearly 20 miles combined.
“Cycle tracks can be expensive to put in if they involve moving the sidewalk, changing the drain grate location and putting in concrete islands between the cycle tracks and the parallel parked cars or moving cars,” Lusk said. “A bike lane can be painted and it’s on the road-side of parallel parked cars, where there’s a double Russian roulette, because you can get doored or swerve to avoid a door and be in a moving traffic lane.”
In addition, Lusk said implementing cycle tracks would lower the nation’s lingering obesity rate by encouraging people to commute by bicycle during their daily routines.
“We know that it’s better if people can engage in routine physical activity — ideally seven days a week — as part of a normal trip to work, the store or school as opposed to engaging in discretionary physical activity, such as going to the gym, which would require time for recreation, and walking, which would require for a person to walk briskly to control weight,” Lusk said.
Because NHTSA guidelines currently do not standardize the creation of cycle tracks instead of bike lanes, Lusk said some cities may become discouraged or disinterested in implementing cycle tracks, because city governments would have to own funds to create it. As a result, Lusk said cycle tracks are commonly found in cities with progressive leaders, more funding and sometimes wealthier tax bases.
Despite Oregon’s steps forward in transportation and sustainability, some people say more can and should be done in implementing an increasing amount of cycle tracks.
“Oregon cities are better about bike infrastructure than cities in other states — in most cases, probably because of statewide planning requirements — but there’s still plenty of room for improvement,” Nick Garcia, president of LiveMove, a University organization that encourages sustainable transportation practices, said in an e-mail. “European cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam have as many as 40 percent of residents cycling as their primary mode of transportation. Some of that comes from higher urban densities and the expense of car ownership in those countries, but some of it comes from having much better bicycle infrastructure, including separated bike lanes.”
However, some believe the issue is more complicated than it seems on the surface and other factors may prevent cities from implementing cycle tracks.
“I’d say that if there were more bike lanes, people would probably use bikes to get around more,” Jacobs said. “Although, it is a hard thing to do in a place like Oregon where it’s raining all of the time.”
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