Simulation determines how to best spend on bike infrastructure

The city of Auckland, New Zealand, has used a new simulation method to figure out the best way to spend on bike infrastructure in the city, looking forward to 2050.

Auckland has gained a reputation as a city that is rough for cyclists, but city staff want that changed. The new simulation method used bicycle infrastructure data from cities around the world and the unique characteristics of Auckland to determine that the best investment the city could make was in paved, segregated bike lanes on major arterial routes and in providing safe local streets for cycling between dedicated bike lanes.

Perhaps more exciting is that the simulation seems to be the first ever comprehensive, forward-looking and long-term analysis of how to approach cycling infrastructure to best benefit cities. It could potentially be used to find how individual cities around the world stand to benefit most from different policy options for increasing bike use.

The simulation came up with a cost analysis of installing bike lanes and researchers claim that every dollar invested in new infrastructure, if spent well, could return tens of dollars in saved money later, largely through decreasing costs associated with inactivity and sedentary lifestyles, which are increasingly becoming a problem in New Zealand.

“Our model projections suggest that transforming urban roads over the next 40 years, using best practice physical separation on main roads and bicycle-friendly speed reduction on local streets, would yield benefits 10-25 times greater than costs,” authors of the report wrote.

“Extending the approach taken in this study could identify intervention patterns that reduce health and social inequalities. Further research is also needed on benefits and costs that have not been counted to date, enabling a more complete assessment of active transport policies.”