Using Stress Maps to Identify Gaps in the Bike Network

Tu and Rixey assigned streets a stress level from one to four, one being most comfortable and four being highly stressful, based on factors such as levels of traffic, speeds, and availability of protective bike infrastructure. Under this breakdown, only “strong and fearless” riders would feel comfortable on the stressful level-four streets.

While their analysis is still ongoing, the two discussed how bikeshare stations are often located on streets around the most confident and strong cyclists who can deal with higher stress roads (about 12 percent of potential riders) rather than those who are “interested but concerned,” about 51 percent of potential cyclists.

Tu and Rixey’s stress and connectivity map, on which users can adjust their own level of bicycling confidence, exemplified how the county’s bike network effectively disappears for riders who would only ride on low-stress roads. It is even impossible to travel between certain bikeshare stations without traversing stressful (levels three-to-four) roads, and many other station pairs require routes at least twice as long in order to stick to low-stress streets. As an individual’s stress tolerance drops, so does the feasibility of much of Capital Bikeshare -- and by extension, bicycling -- in Montgomery County.

However, Tu and Rixey pointed out that there are pockets of highly ridable streets throughout Montgomery County that, with only one or two low-stress connections, could dramatically expand bicyclists’ accessibility and connectivity. Better connections like these are vital to promoting the growth of bikeshare and bicycling as reliable transportation options, and maps like Tu and Rixey’s can be immensely useful tools for planners to best improve this network and make it accessible to more riders.