STUDIES THAT SUPPORT THE EFFECTIVENESS AND ACCEPTANCE OF BIKE BOXES
Speaking of bicycle-friendly, Portland, Oregon, was the first city in the United States to introduce large-scale bike box installations, implementing 12 bike boxes throughout the City’ s center in 2008. The bike boxes allow bicyclists to position themselves to go straight or turn right but not to turn left. To enhance the research potential of this pioneering experiment, the City colored nine of the boxes green and omitted the green on the other three so that potential differences in resulting traffic behavior could be studied.
Here, in a nutshell, are the results: The studied bike boxes were greeted positively by drivers and bicyclists, compliance was high among both groups, conflicts dropped, yielding increased, and encroachment of traffic on crosswalks was reduced, according to the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium’ s January 2011“ Evaluation of Bike Boxes at Signalized Intersections” report. The report was prepared by Portland State University scholars for the City and OTREC.
The report states that its analysis was based on 918 hours of before-and-after video as well as surveys of 468 cyclists contacted at or near the intersections and 721 motorists recruited for the survey via email.
Even as the number of cyclists nearly doubled and motor vehicle right-turn volumes increased by 15 % from before to after, the number of observed conflicts in the intersections decreased from 29 to 20 from the before period to the after period.
Likewise, bike box locations displayed improved behavior among right-turning vehicles in terms of yielding to through bike traffic.
“ The surveys found that both motorists and cyclists perceived the intersections to be safer after the installation of the bike boxes,” the OTREC report states.“ In particular, 42 % of motorists who are not cyclists felt driving through the intersections was safer with the bike boxes, compared with 14 % who felt it was more dangerous. Moreover, 77 % of cyclists felt bicycling through the intersections was safer with the bike boxes, compared with 2 % who felt it was more dangerous.”
4 | USING BIKE BOXES