bike infrastructure density and per capita Benchmarks
The RITC Bicycle Infrastructure Benchmarks takes some of the data from the BC index and grows to include the places we’ve visited, and that feature in a blog post or book. The charts below rank selected municipalities by the length of their all ages and abilities bike network by area and population. It’s not an index as such, and it differs from the BC index that also included a measure of mode share. That was easy to get for BC from the census, but it’s challenging to get that number in a consistent manner across countries. It’s just a straight up comparison or benchmark of kilometres of all ages and abilities infrastructure by area and population.
It’s a list we’ll keep adding to over time, so check back when I post new blogs to see how the comparisons change and if any new countries appear near the top. The point of this is not to name or shame, everywhere is at a different point in their journey to making their municipality more bikeable. It’s simply to see how municipalities vary across the world, understand if the feeling of comfort that I might write about in blogs reflects the relative infrastructure they provide. It features a number of BC municipalities because that’s where I’m based, many Dutch municipalities because I’ve spent a lot of time there and hold them as the gold standard, and others as we visit and map the data.
Density is by far the biggest indicator of a connected network and favours compact communities such as New Westminster or Victoria, Delft or Gouda, but municipalities with large natural areas are somewhat penalized in this comparison. The per capita calculation provides a different perspective, but one that favours small communities with a large rural pathway network, no bad thing of course, I’ve posted about Texel and Whistler and how easy it can be to get around those communities. It’s an infrastructure benchmark, a way to see how different places compare, nothing more, nothing less…Onto the numbers…
Obviously a community that scores well in both metrics could be considered optimal, so a scatter plot is shown below, top right better…
How the numbers are arrived at:
Data: bike infrastructure mapped in OpenStreetMap, grouped by municipality and facility type.
What’s counted: bike paths, paved multi-use pathways, protected bike lanes, and local shared streets such as woonerven, bicycle streets and living streets.
What’s not counted: painted bike lanes, shoulders, shared major roads, crossings and unpaved paths.
Surfaces: unpaved surfaces like gravel, dirt and grass are excluded. Paving stones are counted, since much of the Dutch network is brick.
One-way vs two-way: one-way facilities count at half their length, so a pair of one-way bike lanes on either side of a street counts as one corridor, the same as a two-way path.
Density: counted km divided by municipal area (km per km²).
Per capita: counted km divided by population (km per 1,000 residents).
Caveats: areas are full municipal boundaries, including rural land and some water, so cities with large rural fringes look less dense than their built-up areas really are. Small municipalities also tend to score higher per capita.
Weighting: No weighting is applied to these metrics, pure length over area or population.