Factors associated with the rate of bike plan implementation in American cities

Abstract

Most major American cities have been building out the infrastructure envisioned in their bicycle master plans for at least a decade. Many municipal departments of transportation are steadily building what their plans say they should, some are rapidly expanding their infrastructure, but some are lagging. Although researchers are studying the effects of this infrastructure and professional organizations are tracking its expansion, few so far have examined the different political, economic, and other factors that might be responsible for the differences in the rate at which cities are able to build their bike plans. This thesis develops a methodology for calculating the compound annual growth rate of bike lane networks in American cities based on longitudinal survey data collected by the Alliance for Walking and Biking and League of American Bicyclists since 2007, and then compares each city’s growth rate against factors such as political turnover, annual precipitation, and funding that could be associated with different levels of success. While many patterns are evident, very few are statistically significant. Based on this research, bike lane implementation appears to be a highly individualized process driven by factors that are difficult to measure or understand at a national scale.