Aalborg Universitet Bike Infrastructures Report Silva, Victor ... - VBN

• With regard to intersections with traffic lights it appears
that cyclists hardly noticed any difference between traffic
light adjustments on the bicycle route and at other intersections.
What they liked most was that the number of intersections
with traffic lights was diminished at the bicycle
route and for that reason they had less delay. Again this
underlines the importance of the requirement of directness.
3.6.5 Economy
With the implementation of the bicycle routes the position
of shops was a big issue. Especially in The Hague shop
keepers weren’t very happy with the implementation of
the route (which was one of the first projects in their kind).
The implementation of several parts of the route got seriously
delayed because of the opposition of shop keepers
and in the end some parts that had been planned were
never implemented. The fear for loosing volume of business
is only too understandable. Therefore a research
was done on the impact of the bicycle route and its implementation
on shop sales along the route.
The research in The Hague compared the developments
in the turnover of the shops along the bicycle route with
the country wide average turnover developments and
the development of a similar control group of comparable
shops. For the shops in Tilburg it appeared impossible
to compose a proper control group and thus only
the comparison was made with the country wide trends.
Nevertheless the findings in both cities were consistent
with each other.
In both cities the volume of business of shops along the
bicycle routes was negatively affected in the construction
phase: their turn over was below the country wide average
for similar shops, although this effect was much lower
for shops in the food sector that attracted their clients from
the neighbourhood. After the construction the shops in the
food sector very quickly caught up and performed actually
better than the country wide average. Quite different was
the turnover development of shops in the sector of durable
consumer goods (that often attract their clients from
a wider area): they performed far below the country wide
trends, and also the number of shops closing down in this
sector was relatively high. It should be noted though that
there are large differences between sub-sectors and also
that a number of these shops (especially in The Hague)
were already marginal before the bicycle route was implemented.
In conclusion one can say that the construction phase of
public works will very likely cause some negative impacts
on the development of turnovers of shops. Generally
shops will catch up later and compensate for the losses
in volume of business during the construction. But this is
not true for all sectors. Especially shops in durable consumer
goods seemed (at that time) to be more vulnerable
for changes in the quality of their accessibility (e.g.
because of the reduction parking space) than shops in
the food sector. Explaining factor for this was the difference
in catchment area for the different sectors: when clients
come from the neighbourhood there was hardly any
negative effect, whereas shops that got their clients from
a wider area had more problems with their recovery. One
could even say: there might be winners and their might be
losers. In any case it is good to pay attention to specific issues
that might have impact on the accessibility of shops
for their existing clients (e.g. with regard to parking space,
loading and unloading facilities etc) in order to minimise
the disturbance of businesses.
3.7 Discussion
The ‘demonstration bicycle routes’ implemented in the
late 1970’s in The Hague and Tilburg was the first well
documented case study on the impact of cycling infrastructure.
These projects can be seen as the first serious
attempt to provide high quality infrastructure for cycling
and to study the impacts extensively. Although the projects
suffered from some ambiguity in their set up (trying to
combine a demonstration of feasibility with experimental
designs), the findings of the accompanying researches
contain already many elements which were reflected in
‘Sign up for the bike, design manual for cycle-friendly infrastructure’,
published later in 1993 and updated in 2006
under the title ‘Design manual for bicycle traffic’.
The projects showed a number of things:
• Cyclists do appreciate dedicated facilities for cycling.
What they liked specifically in the two projects was the
(perceived!) improvement of road safety, the experience
of undisturbed cycling, improvements of directness (without
detours and delays), and – with regard to design – the
‘furnishing’ of the route: the red coloured pavement and
other design elements that underlined the tracing,
recognisability and continuity of the route.
• Apart from providing the shortest connection between
origin and destination the directness of a route can be
improved by minimising delays: giving right of way to cyclists
at intersections and minimise the number of traffic
lights on the route.
• However cyclists liked the design of the route, they were
only to a very limited extent prepared to make detours to
take full advantage of the improved cycling conditions. Although
the demonstration routes attracted a great deal of
cyclists from parallel routes, these new routes had more
or less the same length as the earlier used routes or were
shorter.
• Although road safety is considered to be vital by both
bicycle users and policy makers, there was a remarkable
contrast between the impacts of the facilities on the
factual and the perceived road safety: road safety data
showed no or very minor impacts, whereas the perceived
road safety improved substantially. Policy makers were
disappointed about the marginal impact of the facilities on
the ‘objective’ road safety figures.
• The research also suggested that one should be careful
with applying one-sided two directional bicycle tracks:
this type of facility can have a negative impact on both
factual (objective) and perceived (subjective) road safety
of cyclists. Two sided one-directional bicycle tracks are on
average experienced as more safe than one sided twodirectional
cycle tracks. Thus one sided two-directional
tracks should only be applied if there are clear advantages
such as diminishing the need for crossing busy roads.
• With regard to experimental design features the project
provided better understanding of effective design of priority
intersections for cyclists. Very instructive were the observations
of road users’ behaviour at those intersections.
• Furthermore the researchers did some theoretical analyses
so as to shed light on what would be the ideal mesh
width in a network of cycle routes. This provided the basis
for the next demonstration project in this overview of
case studies: the Delft bicycle network, implemented in
the 1980’s.
In general the bicycle route in Tilburg was better appreciated
than the bicycle route in The Hague and this difference
in appreciation appears to be reciprocal correlated
with differences in expectations. Yet the The Hague cyclists
were more in favour of extensions of the bicycle
route than those in Tilburg. But also the opposition in The
Hague appeared to be much stronger. It is a kind of irony
that the municipality of Tilburg after the project started
with the implementation of a comprehensive bicycle network
(which was locally known as Tilburg’s ‘star network’)
with a strong emphasis on radial connections with the city
centre, whereas the municipality of The Hague did not
continue its efforts to substantially improve the cycling
conditions. Continuing complaints of shop keepers eventually
even resulted in the dismantling of large parts of the
bicycle route in The Hague.
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