Cycling and public transportation sharing space: an option to increase cycling ridership

Abstract

Allowing cyclists in bus lanes is an alternative to encourage diversity in mobility within consolidated cities, as this allows providing an infrastructure for cycling in places where for the limited right-of-way it is not possible to provide an independent lane. Apart of efficiency and safety, combining two modes of transport in the same space generates concerns such as the bus-cyclist interaction. Therefore, the design of shared bus-bike lanes (SBBLs) should ensure efficiency and safety for buses and cyclists. The lack of a general standard for the design of SBBLs hindered their implementation in the cities of developing countries that generally lack the human, economic and technical resources to adjust via research the design to the prevailing local conditions. This paper presents an analysis of design guidelines for SBBLs applied in Europe, North America and Australia, showing that the type of cycling infrastructure, the alignment within the SBBL and the lane width, are the parameters that should be considered to ensure safety and efficiency of these two modes. Furthermore, review of the literature on bus and bicycle mobility systems in Paris, revealed that increasing the public transport and cycling ridership not only depends on the quality of the built infrastructure, but also on the coordination between the design, operation, enforcement and control of the proper use of such structures and the measures implemented to discourage the use of private vehicles.