How Bike Ridership Data Can Improve Bike Safety in Los Angeles

Details

• Creators:
  Salazar, Anthony Kenzo
• Corporate Creators:
  University of California, Los Angeles. Institute of Transportation Studies
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  Bicycles Bicycle Safety Bottlenecks Cyclists Data Collection Fatalities Infrastructure Night Time
• Publication/ Report Number:
  LAS2601
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/doi:10.17610/T6S31M
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States ; Long Beach (California)
• Edition:
  Final Report
• Corporate Publisher:
  University of California, Los Angeles. Institute of Transportation Studies
• Abstract:
  Biking is a crucial mobility option for cities as it is dramatically more space-efficient than cars. Los Angeles, however, has failed over the last ten years to increase the viability of biking, as the number of cyclist deaths and serious injuries has not changed, while ridership has stagnated, and may be decreasing. One reason for this may be that LA’s bike infrastructure planning does not take into account where people are actually biking. This project examines the many benefits that an understanding of bike ridership patterns can provide for bike infrastructure planning. In order to estimate LA’s bike ridership, several data sources are analyzed through spatial, temporal, and longitudinal lenses. One key source of data was recorded trip data from Metro Bike Share, Los Angeles’s rentable bike share program. I find that bike share users exhibit travel patterns that closely resemble those of other cyclists within the same areas, suggesting that bike share data can serve as a useful proxy for broader ridership trends. Further, this report shows how bike ridership data can enable cities to invest proactively in areas where ridership is growing, build adaptively around shifting time-of-day trends, prioritize important connectivity bottlenecks, and identify interventions that will impact the greatest number of cyclists. For two examples, Koreatown exhibits the most nighttime ridership and areas around UCLA and USC exhibit the fastest-growing ridership compared to all other LA neighborhoods. Finally, ridership volume is a key factor in understanding cyclist risk, and in strategically leveraging the “safety-in-numbers” phenomenon for cyclists.
• Format:
  PDF
• Collection(s):
  FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center for Advanced Aerospace
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:2f4e56f17ad156c249455cb20da1f480a926a21be68fca82aa004513a3c02dfa3d240def0c36b1c522bed704ca594ab82eef1bc0d55e1283218459c96642ab65
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/92464/dot_92464_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 9.64 MB ]