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Tools like BikeMaps.org and PeopleForBikes’ Bicycle Network Analysis help planners make investment decisions that prioritize safety.

In case you’ve missed the abundance of less-than-stellar headlines, the pandemic has coincided with a surge in car crashes and deaths. In fact, according to the New York Times, “The United States is enduring its most severe increase in traffic deaths since the 1940s.” Due to vehicle improvements, reductions in speed limits and a crackdown on drunk driving, crashes have declined since the 1960s — although lower-income and BIPOC communities continue to bear the brunt of the violence.

Fast forward to summer 2020. With fewer folks on the roads, aggressive driving became the norm. When more cars returned later in the pandemic, the trend in crashes continued to rise, and between 2019 and 2021 per capita vehicle deaths rose an astonishing 17.5%. The trend has impacted pedestrians as well as bicyclists, who make up a fifth of traffic deaths and are far more vulnerable to dangerous street design and aggressive driving. 

In 2014, Trisalyn Nelson, a geography professor and spatial data scientist, was biking when she had a near-miss with a car. It’s estimated that only 20 to 30% of crashes are officially reported, and even less than a decade ago there was no centralized reporting of crash data or near misses for bicyclists. If only a fraction of crashes are reported and you’re an urban planner or policymaker trying to prioritize investments in safer streets, the lack of good data makes it difficult to know where to start. 

“At the time, there was this growing popularity of using crowdsourcing to improve data on a bunch of things,” said Nelson, who was then teaching at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. “We really wanted to develop a system that would allow us to curate the individual rider’s experience to try and understand where safety issues occur and how we can better design our on-street infrastructure.”

Nelson, alongside colleagues from the Spatial Pattern Analysis & Research (SPAR) Lab, recruited developer Taylor Denouden and graduate student Ben Jestico to build BikeMaps.org, a data resource that maps bike safety outcomes as collisions or near misses. The primary national resource for mapping crashes, the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data set, only counts crashes that involve a motor vehicle and a fatality. Some cities collect more comprehensive collision data independently, but there is no national source compiling city-level data. BikeMaps has emerged as one resource to help broaden the definition of safety data and fill in the gaps through crowdsourcing.

The system, which resembles Google Maps, allows a user to scroll to their city, find the location where an incident occurred, and drop a pin, prompting them to answer a series of questions.  

“We spent a lot of time working with bike safety researchers and city planners to try and figure out what kind of questions we should ask on the map,” said Nelson. “People can describe what happens and we get some really great descriptions.”

The product team also had developers layer in Strava ridership data, which helps researchers contextualize the safety data. For example, if one bicyclist out of 10 gets in a traffic collision on a street, the street is super unsafe. If one out of 1,000 bicyclists is involved in a crash, the crash risk is much lower. Since data on bicycling exposure is notoriously hard to obtain, BikeMaps turned to Strava to provide a sample of bicycling volumes. In conjunction with other data sources and correcting for any biases in the data, the team is able to paint a more accurate picture of the total number of riders in any given place at different times of the day.

Seed funding for the BikeMaps website was originally provided by the Canadian Automobile Association (Canada’s version of AAA), while the Public Health Agency of Canada invested heavily in its promotion to recruit crowdsourced contributions to the map. Today, Strava remains a close collaborator while funding comes from both Canadian and U.S. sources. Assorted staff, researchers and students maintain the site. BikeMaps.org is currently used in more than 40 countries in five different languages and a version for pedestrians and folks in wheelchairs is currently in the works.

In order to maintain a simple, easy-to-use interface, the website serves solely to crowdsource data rather than display all safety data, even in cases where other crash data is available, such as from police reports or hospital visits. However, the BikeMaps team conducts in-depth research and analysis when partnering with cities, collecting all available data and showcasing “hot spots” — or particularly dangerous areas for bicyclists. Transportation officials can then use the BikeMaps team’s analysis to prioritize infrastructure improvements in targeted areas. 

“We really want to help create access to bicycling by making cities safer,” said Nelson. “And the only way to do that is to really empower people making decisions to figure out where they should be making investments.”

The beauty of BikeMaps is that it serves as a call to action for everyday individuals who are passionate about bike safety data, allowing anyone to map their own experience and identify hazards. The project is always looking for champions within communities to advocate for bike safety and provides resources to share and encourage action locally. 

As a resource, BikeMaps complements PeopleForBikes’ Bicycle Network Analysis (BNA) tool, which is a major component of our City Ratings. The BNA identifies low-stress bikeways and emphasizes connectivity, focusing on the need to build more high-quality, safe bike networks. BikeMaps focuses on specific safety incidents, which in conjunction with the BNA can help cities better prioritize infrastructure investments for safety and connectivity.

“It’s important to understand where you need to have investment but also where investment will lead to a more connected network,” said Nelson, noting that equity also needs to be considered. “We want to increase safety but with a focus on access. Who needs access to bicycling the most? People who have the least amount of choice in terms of their transportation modes.”

BikeMaps has submitted grant proposals to design and deploy an equity dashboard for transportation decision-making, but that’s still a work in process. Nelson acknowledges that some things — such as income levels and race percentages — are easy to quantify, but other factors that impact access will differ from community to community. 

“When it comes to that work, much of the decision-making needs to be done with community partners who are underserved,” said Nelson, emphasizing the need for partnerships between government, nonprofits, academia, and community-based organizations. “We need to make sure the voices we’re trying to serve are at the table and that we’re not just coming from the top down with ideas. But I think that will lead to new challenges around data and that’s where a team like mine can really come in and be helpful.”

Rebecca Davies, PeopleForBikes’ City Ratings program director, sees City Ratings and BikeMaps as complementary resources. She also welcomes additional bike data mapping tools, such as New Orleans’ bike equity index, which incorporates demographic data into bike planning, and Toole Design’s Safer Streets Priority Finder, which calculates injury and fatality risk based on a city’s historical data. In the absence of federal or state governments tracking equity, safety and connectivity information, planners looking to build better bike cities are often forced to create their own datasets or make decisions based on incomplete information. And while the U.S. Department of Transportation is starting to acknowledge the importance of data collection and analysis when it comes to road user safety, more work is needed.

“Ultimately, I hope that we get more complete data on bike infrastructure, ridership, and safety outcomes from the Federal Government,” said Davies. “Until measuring bicycling is a national priority, City Ratings and BikeMaps are two projects helping to fill those gaps.”

PeopleForBikes, in collaboration with Wend Collective, helped five U.S. cities successfully increase bicycle mobility through the construction of new bike infrastructure.

In 2018, PeopleForBikes set out to accelerate the construction of mobility networks in five U.S. cities — Austin, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Denver, Colorado and Providence, Rhode Island. The project, dubbed the Final Mile, in partnership with Wend Collective, was successful in achieving that goal. It also created a playbook for any city looking to quickly build quality, connected bike infrastructure.

The Final Mile utilized a dynamic, accelerated approach to combine existing political will and untapped community support for bicycling by providing the necessary resources for cities to rapidly accelerate the pace of bike network implementation.

Austin completed 115 miles of new bike lanes to achieve a 50% build-out of its All Ages and Abilities Mobility Network in only 24 months.

Denver constructed 100 miles of new bikeways, tripling the pace at which its planned network of interconnected, low-stress bikeways was being built. 

New Orleans managed to construct 27 miles of new bikeways and offered the highest concentration of new protected bike lanes in the program.

Providence constructed 43 miles of new bikeways, with an additional 22 miles planned for construction in 2022. 

Pittsburgh completed 50 new network miles and is dedicated to completing another 15 miles in 2022.

The Final Mile program offers a unique model of investment designed to shape local policy through political action. In the five funded cities, the program helped inform growing interest and support for bicycling, aided local leaders in shaping their goals and contributed to national momentum in favor of improved bicycling infrastructure. 

Below are our top lessons learned from the Final Mile.

Cities are capable of achieving tremendous goals when they have the means and will to do so. The Final Mile program asked these cities to find the will (through community-driven advocacy) so local leaders supported by PeopleForBikes could provide the means (funding and expertise).

With a bold vision and sufficient resources, cities are able to establish more ambitious goals and achieve them. 

Balance must be struck between elected officials, city staff, advocacy groups, community leaders and residents to achieve success. 

Every stakeholder group has a role to play in creating the initiatives. The Final Mile framework helped streamline processes to move the campaigns forward quickly.  

Every project faces unique hurdles, including city administration structure, the way resources are allocated and how communities are engaged in the decision making process. 

The Final Mile funded parallel strategies in all five cities, but approaches will vary to meet the needs of each individual city looking to achieve success. 

Developing inclusive opportunities to comment is the most efficient way to deliver real feedback to officials from the people most affected by their decisions. 

Amplifying supportive voices helps highlight what is most important to the community.

While all cities are unique in their challenges and resources, much of the Final Mile programming can be scaled and applied to cities of all sizes across the U.S. to make connected bike networks achievable anywhere. 

Connected bike networks still benefit people who will never use them. Effectively communicating the universal benefits of quality bike infrastructure is crucial in building communitywide consensus. 

Bike networks add value to communities by increasing opportunity, relieving congestion, providing recreation opportunities and more — the benefits stretch far beyond those who chose to move by bike.  

Learn more about the Final Mile by visiting finalmile.peopleforbikes.org.

A Proven Model for Accelerating Bike Networks

New study looks to understand the impacts of allowing Class 1 pedal-assist eMTBs on trails in the Green Mountain State.

PeopleForBikes, in partnership with the Vermont Mountain Bike Association and Fellowship of the Wheel, the Hinesburg Town Forest Committee and the University of Vermont Center for Rural Studies, is excited to announce a new electric mountain bike (eMTB) pilot project on singletrack, non-motorized mountain bike trails in Vermont.

In early 2022, PeopleForBikes sent out requests for proposals to all Vermont Mountain Bike Association (VBMA) chapters in the hopes of securing a partner and trail network that would allow us to study the social and environmental impacts of Class 1 pedal-assist eMTBs in New England. From this proposal process, we officially selected Fellowship of the Wheel (FOTW) as our eMTB Pilot Project trail partner. FOTW identified the Hinesburg Town Forest, near Vermont’s most populous city, Burlington, as the multi-use trail network where the pilot project will be conducted. 

Project partners will conduct a pilot study during the summer of 2022 to better understand the impacts of allowing Class 1 pedal-assist eMTBs on trail networks in Vermont. For the months of July and August, all multi-use trails that currently allow traditional mountain bikes in the Hinesburg Town Forest will include access for Class 1 pedal-assist eMTBs. 

While the mountain bike trails in Hinesburg Town Forest are already open to Class 1 eMTBs, the University of Vermont Center for Rural Studies will create and execute several surveys as part of the project, including the collection of three distinct survey tools. This includes a pre-implementation survey (May), a trail intercept survey (July-Aug.) and a post-implementation focus group (Sept.-Oct.). These surveys, along with eMTB demo days, will be scheduled to gather data regarding perceived impact on physical trail conditions, diversity and inclusion implications and potential social impacts related to the introduction of Class 1 eMTBs on non-motorized, multi-use mountain biking trails.

In addition, a newly created regional stakeholder group will meet at regular intervals throughout the duration of the project. Stakeholders include partners and representatives from across Vermont.

Please reach out to Rachel Fussell, PeopleForBikes’ eMTB policy and program manager, at rachel@peopleforebikes.org with any questions or for more information on ways to get involved. 

Electric Mountain Bike Pilot Project Coming to Vermont

BCycle is the first bike share company to participate in Call2Recycle’s landmark, industrywide battery recycling initiative.

When it comes to the electric bike craze, bike share is just as susceptible to the allure of pedal-assist riding. Systems from Charlotte, North Carolina (Joy Rides), to Portland, Oregon (Biketown), adopted all-electric fleets, while others — including Bublr Bikes in Milwaukee and the new Pogoh system in Pittsburgh — recently created hybrid systems with the introduction of electric-assist bikes. Chicago’s Divvy system, among the largest in the country, first added 3,500 e-bikes in 2020 and plans to have some 10,000 by the end of 2022. 

According to the 2020 NABSA State of the Industry report, 44% of cities with bike share systems have fleets that include e-bikes. That percentage is all but guaranteed to grow within the next few years.

If you’ve ever ridden an e-bike, it’ll come as no surprise that bike share systems that go electric consistently bring in more users. After all, electric bikes make bicycling more attractive to people of all abilities and allow folks to bike longer distances with less physical effort. In 2019, when the Madison BCycle fleet in Madison, Wisconsin, went electric, usage more than doubled, and in New York City, electric-assist Citi Bikes see more than twice as many rides per day than their traditional counterparts. Despite their popularity, however, electric bikes pose two issues for bike share systems: they must be charged and they require lithium-ion batteries, complicating the environmental benefits of bicycling.

To solve the charging issue, operators often have to collect e-bikes and take them elsewhere to recharge, although some systems — including Divvy, Pogoh and WeCycle in Aspen and Basalt, Colorado — have gotten more creative, developing solutions for charging bikes on-site at station docks. The issue of lithium-ion batteries is more problematic. While research shows that e-bikes are more likely to replace short car trips (resulting in significant CO2 savings), the social and environmental impact of the batteries remains notable.

Lithium-ion batteries, though smaller than those used to power electric vehicles, are still a necessary component of all e-bikes. Lithium is a metal and the process of mining and extracting it from ore is devastating for our natural ecosystems. There are only a handful of lithium deposits around the world, many of which are located in indigenous communities that bear the brunt of environmental destruction. The International Energy Agency estimates that the demand for lithium will increase almost 90% over the next two decades if countries meet their ambitious vehicle electrification goals, and continuing to mine is simply isn’t a sustainable solution. Recycling lithium-ion batteries is currently our best option. 

In November 2021, PeopleForBikes partnered with Call2Recycle to debut a first-of-its-kind, industrywide electric bicycle battery recycling program. For participating companies, the E-Bike Battery Recycling Program is a safe and reliable way to keep electric bicycle batteries out of landfills. Some 27 bike suppliers and manufacturers have already signed on to support and fully fund the initiative, which began enrolling retail sites in February. 

The voluntary program uses an extended producer responsibility (EPR) model, which essentially puts the onus of recycling batteries on the manufacturer. Once a company enrolls in the program, every battery it sells into the market is tracked on a monthly basis. That number is then assessed with a per battery fee (currently $15) and the bike battery manufacturer is presented with a bill, which once paid helps Call2Recycle fund the full life of its battery recycling operation, including the cost of materials, containers and shipping.

“The biggest cost out of everything by far is the shipping,” said Rob Latham, the e-bike program manager at Call2Recycle, explaining that there are only a couple of places in the U.S. that have the capability to recover 95% of the metals in e-bike batteries, which allows them to be put back into the supply chain as new products.

The program was designed to be customer-facing, so when an e-bike battery reaches its end of life or is damaged, riders are able to take it to a participating retail store, where staff is trained on how to properly handle and package hazardous material before it's safely shipped to one of Call2Recycle’s partner facilities (the company works with one facility on the west coast and one on the east). There are currently 1,127 U.S. retail locations currently participating in the program and more are expected to finish training and come on board in the coming months, including all of REI’s 174 locations nationwide.

Trek Bicycle Corporation, one of the founding members of the E-Bike Battery Recycling Program, owns BCycle, which operates eight bike share systems in the U.S. (and supplies e-bikes and equipment to another 28). By nature of that connection, BCycle is currently the sole shared micromobility participant currently enrolled in the program. Now, when an e-bike battery on any of BCycle’s 3,500 bikes is no longer operable, there’s a sustainable solution on hand.

“At the center of everything we do in bike share is sustainability,” said Tyler Britz, the bike share marketing manager at Trek. “Before and after our bikes are on the ground and being used, we want to make sure that we're creating sustainable habits throughout the entire life cycle of our products and our bikes.”

Since BCycle first launched e-bikes in Madison in 2019, the need to recycle the batteries has been front-of-mind. All lithium-ion batteries have a lifespan and depending on how often a bike is ridden, they’ll last anywhere from two to five years. From the outset, BCycle has communicated to its operators that they should hold on to end-of-life batteries while the company researches a sustainable solution. With the launch of the Call2Recycle program, BCycle operators can now sign up on the Call2Recycle website, take a short video training and request recycling kits for any batteries they have collected.

“The cost of the program is covered by the cost of the e-bikes BCycle supplies,” said Britz. “So it’s built right in, making things even easier.”

For bike share operators that are not affiliated with BCycle, there’s a regularly updated list of participating manufacturers on Call2Recycle’s website. If a bike share system’s equipment is manufactured by one of the participating companies, getting enrolled in the program is as easy as taking the training and sending old batteries in for recycling. For systems whose manufacturers aren’t yet participating in the program, there are still ways to get involved, including lobbying the original manufacturer to join. Latham says interested parties can reach out through the Call2Recycle website to inquire about options for bike share, including a possible pay-as-you-go model.

BCycle’s e-bikes make up just a small fraction of the total number of electric bike share bikes in the country. For some of the industry’s biggest players — the Lyfts and Limes of the world — who are not yet enrolled in the program, Latham sees an opportunity for them to join or to contract their recycling out to Call2Recycle.

“Given their footprint, they probably have a solution in place for their batteries,” said Latham, adding that it wouldn’t prevent Call2Recycle from being able to serve as a partner. “We look forward to welcoming additional rideshares to help broaden the industry-supported program.”

Environmental sustainability is a focus for all operators, who do everything from paying to offset all of their greenhouse gas emissions to using recycled rubber in docking stations to launching creative campaigns that encourage behavioral change. When it comes to keeping batteries out of landfills, though, things can get complicated and expensive. The benefit of an industrywide program is that at scale, everything is made more affordable and the logistics are easier to manage.

“The barriers to entry are low for taking advantage of this program,” said Britz. “We hope that BCycle’s involvement as currently the only micromobility operator sets a standard for other micromobility operators to take advantage.”

An Electric Bicycle Battery Recycling Program Takes Off

Austin, Texas, and Paris, France, both made big commitments to prioritize bicycling. But how do the cities’ efforts compare?

When people talk about great bicycling cities, places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam usually lead the conversation, perhaps followed by Portland or San Francisco if you’re focused on biking in the U.S. While these lofty reputations are thanks to a myriad of work done by each of these cities over many years, one underlying similarity links many of the world’s best places to ride a bike: a dedicated, concerted investment in infrastructure that gets people where they need to go, safely and conveniently, without needing to get behind the wheel of a car. 

Two cities — Austin, Texas, and Paris, France — both recently made such commitments to prioritize bicycling — connecting communities, relieving traffic congestion, improving air quality and fostering healthier residents along the way.

Paris’ journey began in 2014 under their newly elected Mayor Anne Hidalgo. In an effort to curb the city’s growing car traffic problems and make Paris a global cycling capital, Mayor Hidalgo’s “Plan Velo” was an aggressive, $167 million bicycle infrastructure program that promised to build 1,400 kilometers (~870 miles) of cycleways by 2020, essentially doubling the size of the bike network at the time. 

Also in 2014, Austin, Texas, set a similarly ambitious goal: Build a 400-mile bicycle network that winds throughout the city, connecting urban trails, quiet neighborhood streets and new protected bike lanes. The envisioned “All Ages and Abilities Bicycle Network” would be accompanied by other infrastructure updates, with the end goal of improving mobility and creating a more livable community for all Austin residents. 

“We have to do a better job of giving everyone in our city more equitable, safer and convenient transportation choices,” said Mayor Adler in a 2021 interview with PeopleForBikes. “People of all ages — whether they’re a child or in their eighties — and of all backgrounds have to feel comfortable and secure moving freely in Austin.”

Paris managed to build 1,000 of their planned 1,400-kilometers of cycleways by 2020, increasing bicycle use in the city by 54%, but Austin’s network rollout wasn’t as immediately successful. The city had constructed less than 20 miles of their envisioned network by the end of 2017, a pace that meant the project wouldn’t likely be completed for decades.

Thanks to the efforts of MoveATX, a coalition of community leaders, advocates, activists and local organizations, buoyed by the work of the PeopleForBikes Final Mile project, which sought to accelerate the construction of bike networks in five U.S. cities, Austin sped up the pace of construction, building more than 100 miles of new bikeways between 2019 and June of 2021. This accelerated progress brought the All Ages and Abilities Network to 215 miles, more than half of the envisioned miles in the 2014 plan.

While Paris’ initial success outweighs Austin’s by more than 400 more miles of bikeways built in the same timeframe, there are still lessons to be learned from the Texas Capital. The fact that Austin is only one of few North American cities to reach such a milestone while Paris is following in the footsteps of its bicycle-famous neighbors in Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium shows Austin’s commitment to leading the way on building better bicycling infrastructure in the U.S. This network transformation taking place in its home state of Texas, known for its highways, big trucks and even bigger car-centric attitude, only doubles down on Austin’s dedication to bucking the norm and taking proactive steps that benefit everyone, not just those who drive. 

Outside of their network achievements, the physical size and density of Paris and Austin also makes them an interesting comparison. Austin’s population of just over 1 million resides on 272 square miles where Paris’ 2 million residents are squeezed into just 41 square miles, making Austin seven times larger than its French counterpart with half of the population. 64% of Austin residents currently being able to access the All Ages and Abilities Network show’s the city’s ongoing dedication to making sure infrastructure improvements aren’t solely tied to busy city centers.

Looking ahead, both Austin and Paris show no signs of slowing down. After re-election in 2020, Mayor Hidalgo announced “Act 2” of her Plan Velo, with $290 million in funding dedicated for cycling improvements through 2026. Beyond bike lanes, the additional plans also include removing more than 100,000 on-street parking spaces and limiting vehicle traffic across the city, taking street space back from cars and allowing more room for bike lanes, bike parking, green spaces and other public amenities. 

Thanks to overwhelming voter support for Proposition B in November 2020, Austin passed a $460 million active transportation bond meant to continue the expansion of walking and biking networks throughout the city. $40 million will be directly funding additional miles for the AAA network, of which City of Austin officials expect to pass more than 400 total miles (more than 100% of the original miles envisioned in 2014) by 2025. Once complete, Austin expects 83% of residents to be able to easily walk, bike or scoot using the AAA network throughout the city.

Depending on what metrics you look at, weighing the work of Austin and Paris may seem like comparing apples and oranges. But the common thread that unites the efforts of these capital cities located thousands of miles apart is this: Both cities are not historically known for cycling. But thanks to the strong political will of elected officials combined with existing public support for bicycling, both Paris and Austin made a decision — to prioritize bicycling in order to make their city a better place to live. Cycling utopias aren’t built in a day, but by laying the groundwork to position bicycling as a safe, healthy and easy way to get around, Austin and Paris may soon see themselves amongst the Copenhagens and Amsterdams of the world. 

Learn more about Austin and the Final Mile by visiting finalmile.peopleforbikes.org.

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An Electric Bicycle Battery Recycling Program Takes Off

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