Designing facilities for active mobility is no easy task. More than ever, it requires a great deal of information and expertise to make the right decisions. For example: How wide should a pedestrian crossing be? How much should a bike path curve? How fast should people be allowed to go, and should users flow both ways?
These seemingly technical questions actually raise the issue of how to share public space fairly between modes.
They raise questions like:
- How do people get around in my city today?
- Are my facilities and their associated layouts fair when compared to actual usage?
- Should cities be designed for the users we have today, or for those we’d like to have tomorrow?
On all these subjects, discussions can be challenging and involve multiple stakeholders: local residents, shopkeepers, associations, motorists, cyclists, pedestrians, etc.
But, there’s no better way to find the right answers than by using concrete, real-world data!
Here are a few thoughts on infrastructure sizing, with supporting data.
Mode share and physical space allocated to each mode: are our streets fair?
Study on the Plateau Mont-Royal in Montreal, Canada
To answer these questions, we conducted a study for the city of Montreal in the Plateau Mont-Royal neighborhood (where our Canadian subsidiary is also based! 👋 ) to measure bicycle, car, and pedestrian traffic.
An initial temporary data collection was carried out from April to October 2018 on 19 streets, with a two-week temporary count per street (car, pedestrian, and bike).
Here is the raw data collected on the neighborhood’s main streets:
Temporary data collected at various sites over the April-October period. Pedestrian traffic in gray, bicycle traffic in green.
Temporary counters recorded 1.48 million passes, with:
- 17.5% cyclists
- 55.5% cars
- 27% pedestrians
Based on these short-term traffic counts, the Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT) was extrapolated using a peer-reviewed reference methodology, available here.
This extrapolation made it possible to produce a reliable annual estimate of overall traffic for the period and area of study, and to measure the mode share of each type of user. It showed that the mode share was 56% for vehicles, 32% for pedestrians, and 12% for cyclists.
The data also made it possible to measure the local distribution of users on a street-by-street basis. To answer the question of fairness between mode share and allocated physical space, a measurement of the space allocated to each mode was carried out on a few streets.
Results
On Laval Avenue, cyclists accounted for 35% of all users, but the physical space allocated to them represented only 12% of the total street width!
On Clark Street, which had no bicycle facilities (i.e. 0% of physical space allocated exclusively to bicycles), the bicycle mode share nevertheless reached 32% over the period studied!
The special case of Saint Denis Street
When this study was carried out in 2018, Saint Denis Street had no bicycle facilities, and bicycle traffic represented 4% of total users (a fairly low figure compared with other streets).
However, following the deployment of Montreal’s Express Bike Network and the city’s economic recovery plan, Saint Denis Street underwent a major transformation. The space was significantly redistributed, dedicating 54% to pedestrians and green spaces and 15% to cyclists.
To estimate the impact of this redevelopment, Eco-Counter updated our 2018 study using more recent permanent count data, available on the city’s open data portal.
An analysis of before-and-after data (2018 vs. 2021) showed that bicycle and pedestrian traffic had increased thanks to the redevelopment: between 2018 and 2021, pedestrian traffic increased by 9%, and bicycle traffic by 250%!
Since 2022, an interesting trend has also been developing: a significant peak in cycle traffic has appeared on weekday afternoons. This could be explained by the fact that cyclists, in less of a hurry after work, choose a more pleasant and safer route home, even if it meant taking a short detour.
The result? Bicycle traffic has increased 5-fold on weekday afternoons compared to 2018!
At the same time, the local economy has been revitalized, with the opening of 37 new stores in 2021 and the occupancy rate of commercial premises rising from 75% in 2019 to 85% in 2023. These figures corroborate studies showing that developing active modes of transportation is good for local commerce.
Sizing Bike Lanes
Another important question organizations are asking when planning active transportation infrastructure is: how wide should bike lanes be?
Here too, data can be a valuable aid.
When it comes to sizing bike lanes, organizations like NACTO have comprehensive guides on best practices for every situation, like their Urban Bikeway Design Guide.
For bike lanes adjacent to a curbface, NACTO recommends a width of 6 ft.
However, it is also a best practice to widen bike lanes in areas of high cyclist volumes. So, how wide should your bike lane really be? To find out, you need to count!
Image credit: NACTO
To get an initial idea of bike traffic if you’re not measuring it yet, a useful resource is our world map of displays, which provides information on bike traffic in places of various size and geography: https://eco-display-map.eco-counter.com/.
Sizing Pedestrian Crosswalks
Similar to bike lanes, another example underlining the importance of collecting data for the correct sizing of infrastructure: is my pedestrian crosswalk wide enough?
Thanks to multi-modal counters that can cover large intersections or areas with zone-by-zone analysis (such as our CITIX-AI Evo counter), it is now possible to precisely analyze an infrastructure and obtain insightful information on its sizing.
In the example below, a crosswalk was analyzed to identify the percentage of total traffic that crossed outside the crossing lines. From 5% on weekdays, the percentage rises to 15% on weekends – a strong signal that this facility needs to be made wider!
Radii of Curvature
Another interesting point in the creation of quality infrastructure is the question of radii of curvature (simply put, “how winding or right-angled is my track?”).
The European Cyclists’ Federation stresses the importance of large radii of curvature for bike facilities so that cyclists can safely change direction at junctions and avoid collisions. In general, it is recommended that a curve radius of 20 to 25 m (65 to 82 ft) is required for a design speed of 30 km/h (18 mph).
Read more about their findings in their design parameters report.
Photo credit: ECF
Conversely, for motorized vehicles crossing bike lanes, tighter radii are recommended to moderate their speed and improve safety, as excessively wide radii encourage high speeds and increase the risk of conflicts with pedestrians and cyclists.
Measuring the average speed of users can be a real asset when it comes to understanding usage before deciding on the design of a facility! Our new CITIX-AI Evo system integrates speed measurement for 6 user types, providing precise information on the speed of cyclists, as well as motorized vehicles (cars, buses, etc.), so that you can correctly design your facilities.
What a nice radius of curvature!
How do you find the right size for pedestrian and bike infrastructures?
From the simplest to the most complex infrastructures, we offer a complete range of solutions to help answer the question: “How do I correctly size my pedestrian and bike infrastructures?”.
From a simple solution (a physical counter installed at a precise location) to more advanced solutions such as cross-referencing between several data sources (as with the Cycling Insights or VisitorFlow solutions), or advanced studies carried out by our data team, there are different ways of answering this question, depending on budgets and objectives!
