Investing in Urban Bicycle Facilities

A new mode of transportation and recreation—the bicycle—has explosively entered the public's consciousness. Accompanying this phenomenon has been a rash of problems including a sharp increase in accident rates and thievery. There is a need to provide facilities that will alleviate these problems as well as accommodate the expected increase in bicycling popularity. To assist planning urban bicycle facilities on a more organized basis, with a minimum of misdirected effort and a maximum amount of coordination, at least three basic questions are raised in this paper: (1) how much money should be invested in bicycle facilities; (2) what type of bicycle facilities should be provided; and (3) where should these bicycle facilities be placed? Planning and engineering of bicycle facilities is essentially in a shake-down period in which many good and bad ideas will be tested before the best solutions surface as the norm.