Biking Skyrockets Where San Diego Added Buffered Bike Lanes

Cycling rates have increased 350 percent in 2 years. Image: Bike San Diego
Buffered bike lanes were added in spring 2014. Image: Bike San Diego

Build bike infrastructure and they will ride. It’s true just about everywhere, including San Diego.

Thanks to bike counters set up around the region, Network blog Bike SD got data showing that cycling has skyrocketed on two streets where the city added buffered bike lanes last year:

Photo: Bike SD

In late 2012 SANDAG, the region’s planning agency, installed bike counters around the entire county. The question to answer was: how many people were actually riding in the region?

According to the count data obtained from SDSU’s Active Transportation Research, the bike traffic in Uptown has gone up — by an average of 346% since 2012.

And it looks like the biggest jump in bike ridership happened after the buffered bike lanes were striped on Fourth and Fifth Avenues in 2014.

Even in car-centric San Diego, if you build the bike lanes, people will ride.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Wash Cycle reports that 18 percent of households in the DC metro region use bikes for transportation. The Dallas Morning News’ Transportation Blog writes that Mayor Mike Rawlings, a proponent of the Trinity Toll Road, says the Federal Highway Administration won’t stand in the way of the project. And Bike Portland says a flashing warning signal seems to have reduced right hook collisions involving bicyclists at a problematic intersection.

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