The Council-approved 18 month Cycle Track Network Pilot Project will end in December. The final report and recommendations from Administration will be presented to the Standing Policy Committee on Transportation and Transit on December 8, 2016 and then to Council on December 19, 2016. At these meetings, Council will determine the future of the network.
The public can attend and speak at the December 8 meeting or submit a letter with their comments about the pilot. The December 8 meeting will be held in Council Chambers and will begin at 9:30 a.m. People interested in submitting a letter or presenting at Committee can find out how to do so online.
Results
The cycle tracks give Calgarians a safer and more predictable way to travel by bike to downtown destinations. Over the past 18 months, the project team collected data on 82 performance measures while monitoring the operation and safety for all road users. Many of the performance targets were met and a report summarizing the results is available online. Here are a few highlights:
The primary performance measures for the pilot were:
- Percentage of people cycling, walking and driving satisfied with the pilot (evaluated using a random phone survey)
- Safety (evaluated using number of collisions)
- Bicycle volumes (evaluated using automated counters and manual data collection)
- Travel time for cars during the peak periods (evaluated using GPS and stopwatch trials)
- Incidents of unlawful bicycle riding (evaluated using manual observation)
We found the following results for each of these metrics:
Satisfaction
A third-party telephone survey was conducted city-wide in September 2016 to track awareness, understanding, attitude and support for the project.
- 46% – 54% of people ‘liked’ their most recent driving experience on the routes (51% – 60% in 2014)
- 65% – 82% of people ‘liked’ their most recent cycling experience on the routes (12% – 71% in 2014)
The survey also found that 67% of people support the cycle track pilot and 68% support the Stephen Avenue bicycle pilot. The same survey was conducted in 2014 and 2015, and support remained consistent.
Safety
Safety along the network was closely monitored during the pilot period. Collision information was collected by Calgary Police Service, and during one year of the pilot (June 18, 2015 – June 18, 2016) there were 39 reported collisions between a bike and car and zero fatalities along cycle track corridors.
We reviewed locations where an incident occurred and put in dashed green paint, changed parking or added signs to raise awareness of potential conflicts at these locations.
Bicycle volumes
We have been using automated counters to count the number of bike trips taken each day since the network opened. To date, there have been 1.2 million bicycle trips since June 2015, based on the data at the three middle count locations. Ridership has tripled along the network, and the number of women and children riding has also increased.
Travel times
We anticipated travel time for drivers would increase on the roads with cycle tracks, since typically we had to remove a driving or parking lane to create the bikeway. The Transportation Department recorded travel time for drivers travelling from one end of each cycle track to the other for each route, during the morning and evening rush hours. They found that the longest delay was 90 seconds, on 12th Avenue from 11 Street S.W. to 4 Street S.E. during the morning drive.
Incidents of unlawful bicycle riding
Overall, unlawful sidewalk riding has decreased from an average of 16% (before the cycle tracks) to 2% after the cycle tracks. There were no observed instances of careless riding or near misses on Stephen Avenue during the time the data was collected.
You can learn more at our presentation to Committee on Thursday or visit calgary.ca/cycletracks.