A story I posted yesterday led to interesting comments about bicycle boulevards. We also looked at bike crash data with City traffic safety guru Greg Raisman.
Putting those two things together, I thought I’d share a chart from PDOT that makes it clear that bicyclists are safer on streets that the city has designated and designed as bicycle boulevards.
In this case, 10 years of DMV bicycle crash data has been plotted on a map of southeast Portland. The map compares a major arterial street (SE Hawthorne) with two of the oldest and most successful bicycle boulevard streets in Portland (SE Lincoln and SE Harrison).
Map courtesy PDOT
Click to enlarge (176KB JPEG)
According to City of Portland Bicycle Coordinator Roger Geller, Title 16 of the City Code defines a bicycle boulevard as:
“A roadway with low vehicle traffic volumes where the movement of bicycles is given priority.”
It’s maps and stats like these that have transportation planners and bicycle advocacy groups like the BTA so excited about bicycle boulevards.