Cost-benefit analysis of MAJOR cycling infrastructure projects

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fywydujyl
Cost-benefit analysis of MAJOR cycling infrastructure projects

Hello everyone,

Does anyone have experience with cost-benefit analysis of MAJOR cycling
infrastructure projects? Projects which require *serious* financing or
create significant changes to road capacity in busy corridors but also have
the potential to have a significant impact on cycling ridership. How would
you estimate the cycling demand and quantify the benefits?

For example, does anyone know if there was an analysis of the impact of
shifting a travel lane on a busy bridge from vehicles to cyclists as was
done recently on the Brooklyn Bridge (
https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2021/11/08/brooklyn-bridge-bike-lane-...)
and a few other bridges in North America? What if a multi-use path was
added to such a structure (much more expensive, but no impact on traffic)?
How would you estimate the benefits of such projects?

Any advice, suggestions or references would be much appreciated!

Thanks,

Zvi

moshtagh

Hi Zvi,

NCHRP Report 552 provides guidelines on demand estimation for bike
facilities as well as their benefit monetization. It may not have the
specific facility type(s) or improvement you are looking for but it could
be a good starting point.

Hope it helps,
Vahid Moshtagh
Transportation Planner
VDOT

On Wed, Nov 10, 2021 at 9:07 AM fywydujyl wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> Does anyone have experience with cost-benefit analysis of MAJOR cycling
> infrastructure projects? Projects which require *serious* financing or
> create significant changes to road capacity in busy corridors but also have
> the potential to have a significant impact on cycling ridership. How would
> you estimate the cycling demand and quantify the benefits?
>
> For example, does anyone know if there was an analysis of the impact of
> shifting a travel lane on a busy bridge from vehicles to cyclists as was
> done recently on the Brooklyn Bridge (
> https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2021/11/08/brooklyn-bridge-bike-lane-...
>
> )
> and a few other bridges in North America? What if a multi-use path was
> added to such a structure (much more expensive, but no impact on traffic)?
> How would you estimate the benefits of such projects?
>
> Any advice, suggestions or references would be much appreciated!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Zvi
> --
> Full post:
> https://tmip.org/content/cost-benefit-analysis-major-cycling-infrastruct...
> Manage my subscriptions: https://tmip.org/mailinglist
> Stop emails for this post: https://tmip.org/mailinglist/unsubscribe/13692
>

kkockelm@mail.u...

Hi, Zvi!

I don't have much on cycling, but you can add it as a mode to the open-source, holistic, & fully documented Project Evaluation Toolkit (https://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/kockelman/PET_Website/homepage.htm) for your complete network (if you have demand estimates for all OD pairs before & after, by time of day, mode, etc.) or an abstracted one (where the PEToolkit does the demand estimation for you).
These two paper provide a strong sense of PET applications: https://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/kockelman/public_html/TRB11Toolkit.pdf & https://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/kockelman/public_html/TRB12ToolkitSensi....
I sure hope DOTs & MPOs start using Benefit-Cost Analysis for their Infrastructure Bill investment choices. (We're doing BCA for pedestrian safety treatments across Texas now.)

Dan Fagnant & I do have a direct-demand estimation approach for cyclist levels that worked well when tested across the Seattle region 6 years ago. A pre-print of that published work is provided here: https://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/kockelman/public_html/TRB14BikeCount.pdf. I hope that will be useful to you!

Also hope to see you & the rest of our TMIP posse at TRB in January,
Kara
==========================================
Dr. Kara Kockelman, PhD, PE
Dewitt Greer Centennial Professor in Transportation Engineering
Department of Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering
The University of Texas at Austin
301 E. Dean Keeton St., Stop C1761, Office: 6.9 ECJ
Austin, TX 78712-1112
512-471-0210 (FAX: 512-475-8744)
kkockelm@mail.utexas.edu
http://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/kockelman
==========================================

Mark Bradley

Two documents about modeling cycling demand. I think it's important to get the demand changes fairly accurate before moving to cost-benefit analysis.

NCHRP Report 770: Estimating Bicycling and Walking for Planning and Project Development: A Guidebook https://www.trb.org/Main/Blurbs/171138.aspx
NCHRP 08-36/Task 141: Evaluation of Walk and Bicycle Demand Modeling Practice
https://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/docs/NCHRP8-36CTask141FinalR...

There's also this synthesis document "Evaluating Active Transport Benefits and Costs" by Todd Litman, which was released just last week... https://www.vtpi.org/nmt-tdm.pdf

Mark

..........................................
Mark Bradley
Senior Director

RSG
524 Arroyo Ave| Santa Barbara, CA 93109
415.328.4766
www.rsginc.com

From: KKOCKELM=mail.utexas.edu@mg.tmip.org On Behalf Of kkockelm@mail.utexas.edu
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2021 9:57 AM
To: TMIP
Subject: Re: [TMIP] Cost-benefit analysis of MAJOR cycling infrastructure projects

CAUTION - EXTERNAL EMAIL

Hi, Zvi!

I don't have much on cycling, but you can add it as a mode to the open-source, holistic, & fully documented Project Evaluation Toolkit (https://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/kockelman/PET_Website/homepage.htm) for your complete network (if you have demand estimates for all OD pairs before & after, by time of day, mode, etc.) or an abstracted one (where the PEToolkit does the demand estimation for you).
These two paper provide a strong sense of PET applications: https://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/kockelman/public_html/TRB11Toolkit.pdf & https://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/kockelman/public_html/TRB12ToolkitSensi....
I sure hope DOTs & MPOs start using Benefit-Cost Analysis for their Infrastructure Bill investment choices. (We're doing BCA for pedestrian safety treatments across Texas now.)

Dan Fagnant & I do have a direct-demand estimation approach for cyclist levels that worked well when tested across the Seattle region 6 years ago. A pre-print of that published work is provided here: https://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/kockelman/public_html/TRB14BikeCount.pdf. I hope that will be useful to you!

Also hope to see you & the rest of our TMIP posse at TRB in January,
Kara
==========================================
Dr. Kara Kockelman, PhD, PE
Dewitt Greer Centennial Professor in Transportation Engineering
Department of Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering
The University of Texas at Austin
301 E. Dean Keeton St., Stop C1761, Office: 6.9 ECJ
Austin, TX 78712-1112
512-471-0210 (FAX: 512-475-8744)
kkockelm@mail.utexas.edu
http://www.caee.utexas.edu/prof/kockelman
==========================================
--
Full post: https://tmip.org/content/cost-benefit-analysis-major-cycling-infrastruct...
Manage my subscriptions: https://tmip.org/mailinglist
Stop emails for this post: https://tmip.org/mailinglist/unsubscribe/13692

jabraham

Hi Zvi. If you have a travel model that considers influences on bicycle use, the best thing to do would be to take the top-level mode-choice logsums and feed them into your economic analysis or land use model. And, then do your benefit analysis the same way you would for any other major project.

Here's our 2007 article about the factors we used to include cycling infrastructure and destination attributes into the Calgary and Edmonton regional travel model. It took a year or two after 2007 for them to code up the cycling networks in the model in a way that the influences were properly represented.

Hunt, J.D., Abraham, J.E. Influences on bicycle use. Transportation 34, 453–470 (2007).

I can reach out to the Calgary and Edmonton folks, to see if there are any public examples of such analysis for cycling infrastructure projects specifically.


John Abraham
jea@hbaspecto.com

> On Nov 10, 2021, at 6:58 AM, fywydujyl wrote:
>
> 
> Hello everyone,
>
> Does anyone have experience with cost-benefit analysis of MAJOR cycling
> infrastructure projects? Projects which require *serious* financing or
> create significant changes to road capacity in busy corridors but also have
> the potential to have a significant impact on cycling ridership. How would
> you estimate the cycling demand and quantify the benefits?
>
> For example, does anyone know if there was an analysis of the impact of
> shifting a travel lane on a busy bridge from vehicles to cyclists as was
> done recently on the Brooklyn Bridge (
> https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2021/11/08/brooklyn-bridge-bike-lane-...)
> and a few other bridges in North America? What if a multi-use path was
> added to such a structure (much more expensive, but no impact on traffic)?
> How would you estimate the benefits of such projects?
>
> Any advice, suggestions or references would be much appreciated!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Zvi
>
> --
> Full post: https://tmip.org/content/cost-benefit-analysis-major-cycling-infrastruct...
> Manage my subscriptions: https://tmip.org/mailinglist
> Stop emails for this post: https://tmip.org/mailinglist/unsubscribe/13692

jabunch

John:

The article did not seem to come through with your post.  Can you post a link?