Bekologist

Cycletracks do not need to blanket every street in a community to impact safety and ridership.

North America installations of a variety of bikeways work in concert to build a bicycle network, not every street merits a bikelane in a bike master plan. Sophmoric proclamations about the need for blanket facilities everywhere, or that this is what is indicated by the Harvard study on cycletracks, is not a realistic portrayal of planning for safer roadway bicycling.

For those arguing about no political will to fund solutions, suburban roads would exhibit better economies of scale thru implementation of quality roadway infrastructure improvements versus separate infrastructure. Barrier separated or buffered Class II bikeways may be sufficient to encourage ridership, and are much more economical for those sprawling, low density suburbs. What's really nice for bicycling in suburbs are totally separate path networks, that link up to suburban developments, and feed bicyclists to the city center bikeway network and other regional bikeway networks.

Cycletracks are safer or at least no more dangerous than on street cycling, and they encourage more riding, so should be considered where applicable. On roads where cycletracks may be applicable as part of a bicycle network or proposed bicycle network, they should be considered versus on street planning that has been the norm in America.

Prospect Park West in New York City is an example of a complete streets treatment - that included a parking protected 2 way cycletrack bikeway - that has had positive effects on traffic of all types along prospect Park west. Less speeding, less pedestrian and bicycle accidents, less car crashes, greater bicyclist use.

The researchers even got into the background of the 'cyclists fare best' vacuity, and suggest the engineering bias against cycletracks in the US may be a result of punting and bluffery.