The installation of bike lanes along New Jersey roadways has reduced driving speeds, according to a new study by Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Researchers conducted the study at a high-traffic intersection in a Jersey Shore town to explore ways to decrease vehicle crashes.
The introduction of a "traffic calming" effect could enhance road safety and reduce the risk and severity of crashes, researchers stated. The research was published in The Journal of Urban Mobility.
"We are giving you more evidence that bike lanes save lives," said Hannah Younes, lead author of the study and postdoctoral research associate at the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center in the Rutgers Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. "And it’s not only cyclists’ lives that could be saved. It’s more than that – drivers and pedestrians as well."
The Rutgers team included experts from the Bloustein School, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the Rutgers School of Engineering, and the Department of Computer Science in the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences. They focused their efforts on Cookman and Asbury Avenues in Asbury Park, N.J., where Cookman intersects with Asbury Avenue leading directly to Atlantic Ocean beaches.
Drivers heading to the beach often take a legal right-turn-on-red at this intersection but frequently fail to stop first, creating hazardous conditions for pedestrians and cyclists crossing at the corner.
The research team created a temporary bike lane on Cookman and Asbury Avenues delineated with orange road cones. Bloustein students assisting with the study surveyed random bike and electric scooter riders using this temporary bike lane about their use and attitudes toward bike lanes; most respondents favored them.
Researchers used computer vision techniques to classify speed and trajectory data from over 9,000 motor vehicles before and after creating the bike lane for comparison purposes. They found significant differences: a 28 percent reduction in average maximum speeds and a 21 percent decrease in average speeds for vehicles turning right. For those heading straight without turning, an 8 percent speed reduction was observed; drivers moving perpendicular to the bike lane did not slow down.
Marking bike lanes with cones proved more effective at reducing speed than painted-only lanes. Painted-only lanes were associated with an 11-15 percent speed reduction but only for drivers turning right.
Younes hypothesized that drivers slow down when they see cone-marked bike lanes because these make driving lanes narrower requiring more concentration, making cones or planters easier to notice than painted lines on road surfaces.
Other researchers involved were Clinton Andrews, Robert Noland, Wenwen Zhang, Leigh Ann Von Hagen from Bloustein School; Jie Gong, Jiahao Xia from Civil & Environmental Engineering; Dimitris Metaxas, Song Wen from Computer Science.
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