Show me the (bike Lane) data! From Nate Silver's 538 website

Good data is hard to come by in the arguments over traffic congestion and bike lanes. The article linked below has convincing evidence that taking away a car traffic lane, and replacing it with a bike lane, on a street that is not already at capacity (critical point) does not lead to significant traffic congestion.

The data indicates that if a road is not close to capacity, taking away a traffic lane will increase the traffic volume, but will not lead to congestion. However, taking a street that is already near capacity and swapping in a bike lane may well jam things up significantly.

One lesson of this would be to choose streets that are not already congested to put in bike lanes.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bike-lanes-dont-cause-traffic-j...

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Permalink Reply by Kevin C Dormant on April 11, 2014 at 4:09pm

Great Article. I'm a big 538 fan, but I had not yet seen this. Thanks for posting.

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Permalink Reply by Drewbacca on April 11, 2014 at 9:58pm

thanks for posting this!

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Permalink Reply by Davo on April 12, 2014 at 1:24pm

I think the article is kind of confusing when it says the AADT isn't broken down by day and time in Minneapolis. Then later 'estimates" the peak hour volume which what seems to be arbitrary numbers. With all the technology we have now, one would think that the AADT machines could be set up with a clock in order to get actual volume during these peak hours.