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This research looks at bicycle transportation, particularly bicycle commuting, in three North American cities with extensive bicycling activity and programs: Madison, Wisconsin; Boulder, Colorado; and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The study describes bicycle transportation in these cities to gain ideas for further improvements in Minnesota bicycle transportation. Madison, Boulder, and Toronto share a reputation for high levels of bicycling activity. Each city plans for additions to its extensive system of bike paths and bike lanes. Wisconsin's state plan calls for an interconnected transportation system across government boundaries and jurisdictions and completed a Wisconsin Bicycle Transportation Plan in 1998. Boulder completed a Bicycle System Plan in 1996 as part of its Transportation Master Plan Update for the Boulder Valley. It, too, addresses the need to develop a continuous and well-connected provincial government of Ontario recently amalgamated the six municipal governments in the Toronto metro area to form The New City of Toronto, and the new city is now working on a new bicycle plan. A City Cycling Committee, a committee of the city council, looks at programs to increase the quantity and quality of bicycle trips in Toronto. The three cities also have developed public initiatives to promote bicycling, including bike-to-work events, free bike programs, and awards programs. All three cities publish extensive information about bicycling programs and issues on the Internet. Internet sites include official city sites, sites managed by independent organizations and individual bike activists, and electronic newsletters.

To improve the visibility and safety of pedestrian and bicyclist crossings, traffic-safety professionals across Minnesota have installed the Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacon (RRFB) and Pedestrian Hybrid Beacon (PHB) at numerous locations around the state. The purpose of this evaluation was to determine the safety benefits, if any, for pedestrians and bicyclists after installation of an RRFB or PHB. This report included a before-after analysis as well as a cross-sectional analysis for each type of beacon with a corresponding group of comparison sites. The before-after analysis found that installation of an RRFB resulted in a 67% decrease in fatal crashes and a 62% decrease in bicyclist crashes. Installation of a PHB resulted in a 53% decrease in suspected minor injury crashes, a 67% decrease in pedestrians crashes, and a 50% decrease in bicyclist crashes. The results of the cross-sectional analysis did not indicate that these reductions were statistically significant compared to similar reductions in the control group. Still, the decreases in severe crashes and crashes involving non-motorists at RRFBs and PHBs indicated that both types of beacons could be effective safety treatments.

In order to increase the mileage of public roads that provide an acceptable level of service with available funds and to maximize fully the value of existing roadways for bicyclists, Mn/DOT has adopted bikeway design standards. Because more flexibility is provided, these standards will permit improvements to be made which will result in greater uniformity of highway geometries over major lengths of roadway. These standards are based on the relationship between the characteristics of the road design (bicycle driving area) to the average daily motorized traffic. Although these bikeway standards have been developed and should be used to the maximum extent possible, as with most engineering projects, the designer should use engineering judgement in the application of the standards.

This project provides a statistically defensible estimate of bicycle-miles of travel (BMT) for at least a substantial portion of the Twin Cities region and assesses the feasibility of monitoring bicycle volumes using sampling methods similar to those used to monitor motor vehicle traffic. Researchers used an ArcView database of the Twin Cities street system for the initial sampling frame and extended the database by manually adding information about average annual daily traffic volumes and about on- and off-road bicycle facilities. A stratified random sample of roadways links in Hennepin, Ramsey, and Dakota counties was drawn, and during the months of May through June and August through October 1998, the daytime bicycle volume for one day at each sampled site was obtained using time-lapse video. Researchers then used Cochrane's combined estimator to compute an estimate of average daytime BMT for the study area. Findings show that monitoring bicycle miles of travel using methods similar to those employed for vehicle miles of travel is now technically feasible in the Twin Cities region where several permanent counters on bicycle trails provide a rudimentary continuous count element. A video-based approach appears to be more accurate and less demanding of personnel than is on-site manual counting.

This report describes a system for monitoring bicycle activity in sequences of gray scale images from a stationary camera. Applications for such a system include determining the use and congestion of bicycle paths. The output of the system is a count of the number of bicycles detected in the image sequence. The system uses a simple model of two circular objects separated by relatively known distance, with four levels of abstraction: raw images, blobs, edge images, and the bicycle model. The system was implemented on a dual Pentium computer equipped with a Matrox imaging board and achieved a peak performance of eight frames per second. Experimental results based on outdoor scenes show promising results for a variety of weather conditions.

This report 1) describes the potential for improving bicycle transportation in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, 2) identifies the common barriers and limitations to bike transportation as described by metro area transportation officials and bicycle advocates, and 3) provides an overview of the organizations involved. The cities of Boulder, Colorado; Madison, Wisconsin; and Toronto, Ontario, Canada have built reputations for being bicycle friendly and were reviewed to provide examples of innovative bicycle programs. This guide serves as a starting point in describing bicycle transportation in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. Management of the transportation system in the Twin Cities metropolitan area is based on a multi-agency, regional approach. The Metropolitan Council, the Minnesota Department of Transportation, the counties and the cities all have responsibilities related to transportation in their jurisdictions. Important areas for development in order to make bicycling a viable transportation choice include: bike facilities, leadership, communication, planning, networks, research, measurement, partnerships, funding, information sharing, and customer needs.

This report gives a brief overview of four related small research projects. The full papers resulting from the projects are included as appendices. The four projects were related by the theme of bicycling preferences and behavior with regard to bicycling facilities. The studies were also connected by the fact that they were all based on information from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. The four reports are: Effect of Trails on Cycling. Value of Bicycle Facilities to Commuters. Effect of Facilities on Commute Mode Share. Cycling Behavior Near Facilities. Generally speaking, the results support the notion that people value bicycle facilities, in that they are willing to incur additional time costs in order to use higher quality facilities. The presence of facilities also appears to be associated with higher amounts of riding, although the precise nature of the impact is still unclear..

This Bicycle and Pedestrian Toolbox is a synthesis of current research on bicycle and pedestrian planning and facilities providing transportation planners and engineers with information on how to plan and design a bicycle and pedestrian network for a community. This Bicycle and Pedestrian Toolbox provides transportation planners and engineers with information on how to plan and design a bicycle and pedestrian network for a community. This toolbox summarizes each stage involved in the process of designing an active transportation network with a focus on how land use effects transportation planning. The planning is a cyclical six-stage process where first, community values are determined; second, existing features are evaluated; third, desire lines are identified; fourth, phasing of development is defined; fifth, selecting design treatments; and finally, sixth, evaluation of the network based on performance criteria.

This report establishes basic facts about bicycling in Minnesota, and estimates the sizes of the various types of benefits that bicycling creates. There are three main parts to the report. The first uses surveys and data analysis to estimate the amount of bicycling that takes place in Minnesota, and to describe its characteristics. The second part is the development of a theoretical and accounting framework for categorizing and measuring benefits. The third part calculates estimates of the total general benefits of bicycling in Minnesota. Probably about half of adults bicycle at least once in a typical summer. The benefits that result from this riding are large relative to expenditures on bicycle facilities; by our conservative assumptions, total benefits in Minnesota are in excess of $300 million per year. The size of these benefits is particularly notable when one considers that they are derived from relatively limited bicycling by most of the population. We find that the benefits to cyclists themselves are much larger than the benefits to society that bicycling creates, and that recreational riding, due to its much larger volume, creates more total benefits than does utilitarian riding.

This project addressed several MnDOT critical issues and strategic directions: easing congestion and improving mobility by making multi-modal transit options more easily accessible. It did so by extending the Cyclopath bicycle route-finding system to support multi-modal routes that combine cycling and transit. This required extensions to the route-finding algorithm - to combine biking and transit appropriately - and user interface - to let users express modal preferences and enhance the visual presentation of routes, e.g., to mark mode shifts. We used the Graphserver open-source software to as the routing engine; by building on existing software, we reduced development effort. We conducted interviews with a number of multimodal transit users to guide the design of the user interface.