Bicycle Infrastructure and Routes

Analysis -- Future Potential and Adoption

The importance of bicycle infrastructure is growing in the United States as more people use bicycles for both primary and secondary transportation. Public bicycle infrastructure includes bike lanes, dedicated trails, and parking locations. Several cities publish bike lane data and the OpenStreetMap community maintains a global OpenCycleMap of bicycle-related infrastructure. However, no standards have been developed for publishing the data.

In addition to physical infrastructure, there has also been interest in tracking bicycle routes. Unlike the extensive infrastructure devoted to automobile traffic, there is less systematic data available on bicycle route preferences. Some cities are beginning to conduct bicycle traffic surveys but the data is not published in a standardized way. In a few cities, civic hackers have developed bicycle route tracking apps for mobile phones.

In addition to public infrastructure, bike share systems are now operational in over 40 U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago and Boston. Many bike share programs release static snapshots of their database, but there is currently no standard for data structure. Michael Schade of Mobility Lab recently wrote a proposal for a bike share standard, but no bike share providers have adopted the standard as of the writing of this document.The goal of the bike share data standard is to collect information on bike share stations, usage, and bike trips -- which could be implemented for non-bike share infrastructure as well -- to plan for future infrastructure and facilities.

Additional Resources

• Mobility Lab bike share data standard proposal - http://mobilitylab.org/2014/03/06/an-open-data-standard-would-help-public-discover-bikesharing/
• OpenCycleMap - http://www.opencyclemap.org/