A Group in This City Claims Bike Lanes Do More Harm Than Good. We're Calling B.S.
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Earlier this week, opponents of expanding the bike lane network in Cambridge, Massachusetts released a study that they say proves bike lanes are actually more dangerous than simply sharing the road.
Supporters of the study claim that moving cyclists to their own lane, or even a completely separate protected lane, makes it more dangerous at intersections because motorists can’t see people on bikes. But their data isn’t exactly complete.
First, the study claims to have looked only at a 1.3 mile section of road, when there are plenty of other miles with bike lanes that could have been studied. They also didn’t use any sort of bike counting instruments, which is vital in knowing how many people are using the bike lanes in relation to how many crashes and injuries occur.
There’s also no attention given to any other factor than the bike lanes for explanation of crashes, such as an increase in driver error. No data was given on an increase in speeding tickets, or an increase in running red lights/stop signs.
In her recent essay for The Walrus, Michelle Cyca says people in the U.S. tend to have a very hard time changing when it comes to transportation. “Infrastructure, of all things, elicits not rational responses but deeply emotional ones. Changing our roads, even slightly, feels like an exhortation to change ourselves, because how we get around says a lot about who we think we are.”
The group that somewhat ironically calls themselves Streets for All, looked at three stretches of Mass Avenue in North Cambridge. It concluded that accidents involving injuries to cyclists and drivers increased from 12 in 2018 to 31 in 2022.
But the group’s findings are inconsistent with other studies. Galen Mook, the executive director of the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition, told WCVB News, "This is very incomplete data and disingenuous of this group to present this as any sort of fact."
It turns out, many members of Streets for All are business owners in the area who have objected to losing parking spaces to the bike lanes. But if those business owners looked at what happens to local businesses when bike lanes are present, they’d see that across the board bike lanes benefit business and attract more customers.
Bike lanes don’t cause more crashes. In fact, a 13-year study of multiple cities showed that protected bike lanes reduced fatalities for all road users. It’s one thing to be angry about parking spaces being replaced by bike lanes, but it’s another to present false data that claims the bike lanes are dangerous for the community when it is simply not true.
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