Painted Cycling Lane – Changes in Lateral Paths of Cyclists & Motor Vehicles
Further analysis has been completed by Gorski Consulting from the video documentation session of August 29, 2023 on Colborne Street north of St James Street in London, Ontario. The purpose of the research is to document the lateral position of cyclists and motor vehicles in order to provide some objective evidence about the safety of painted cycling lanes.
The research has been ongoing since early April, 2023 and a number of articles have been posted to this Gorski Consulting website. In the spring and summer three video sessions were carried out when a cycling lane had not yet be installed. Then, it August the cycling lane was painted. An additional session was conducted on August 29, 2023 so that this data could be compared to the previous dates when the cycling lane did not exist.
The lateral position of traffic units at the site was enabled by painting orange dots at 5-metre intervals along a distance of 50 metres. The dots were painted laterally across the northbound lane of Colborne at 20-centimetre intervals over a width of 3 metres. The zero point for this dots was the edge of the east concrete gutter of Colborne.
We now have completed documenting the traffic units by separating them into four categories: 1. Cyclists, 2. LTC Transit Buses, 3. Light Duty vehicles and 4. Heavy duty vehicles. The table of all these results is shown below.
This table now contains the data from observations before and after the painted cycling lane was completed.
Along the bottom row we can see the overall averages for lateral paths of all the traffic units. Before the cycling lane was installed the overall average position of all traffic units was 0.94 metres west of the concrete gutter. After the installation of the painted cycling lane the overall average of all traffic units was 1.57 metres west of the concrete gutter. So, overall, traffic was moved further away from the right side of the lane. Yet there are important differences when looking at the categories of traffic.
Looking at cyclists, their paths were moved slightly closer to the right of the lane and this is in contrast to the motor vehicles in the other three categories. Before the cycling lane was created cyclists rode at an average of 0.71 metres west of the concrete gutter. After the cycling lane installation that average was reduced to 0.58 metres. While the difference of 13 centimetres appears slight, it can be noted that the width of the cycling lane includes a junction between the concrete gutter and asphalt surface. This junction produces a potential danger that cyclists could lose control of their cycle when riding along that junction.
With respect to the three remaining vehicle categories their paths were all taken further away from the cycling lane and this is an important improvement. There have been criticisms of painted cycling lanes, particularly by cyclists who consider them of little effect, and some of that criticism is valid. However, it needs to be acknowledged that the findings from the present research indicates that there is some benefit to painted cycling lanes in that they help to separate cyclists from motor vehicles.
However not all painted cycling lanes are the same. Under certain conditions there can be safety problems which do not exist at the Colborne Street site. Situations where there is a curve in a roadway can cause traffic units to wander out of their normal position. Situations of upgrades and downgrades can also cause such wandering. And certain road characteristics such as surface depressions or manhole covers can cause such wandering. Each site and each roadway needs to be evaluated according to its unique conditions and mediation should be applied when necessary.
More broadly it needs to be acknowledged that cycling lane characteristics are not the only causes of danger and conflict to cyclists. In the analysis of motor vehicle causes it has been known for many decades that the acronym “HVE” applies. The Human, the Vehicle and the Environment are all broad categories of influences on collision causation. So too HVE applies to cyclist collision analysis. The Human that operates a cyclist obviously has an effect on collisions much like in motor vehicle collisions. And the cycling Vehicle cannot be ignored. Unusual cycle characteristics such as excessive widths can cause problems even in protected cycling lanes.
The concept of “clear zones” on roadways has been applied for decades so that motor vehicles are less likely to strike an immovable object such as tree or pole. Deformable and displacing barriers reduce the consequences of such interactions. But barriers are of minimal benefit in incidents involving cyclists. Cyclists have minimal protection when contacting anything, even of relatively minor mass, such as a post or a curb. In many instances the initial contact may be less severe than when a cyclist falls and hits their head on road surface or curb. Fatal head injuries, particularly when a cyclist is not wearing a helmet, are not uncommon in such instances.
The collection of objective evidence is a key objective in conducting cyclist safety research. But just as important is the dissemination of that research to the users of the road, the vast majority of whom may be unsophisticated and inexperienced in understanding what is dangerous to them.
Tractor-Trailer Rollover of Median Cable Barrier on Hwy 401 Near Chatham
Police investigating serious collisions in Ontario continually fail to inform the public of dangerous conditions that could result in their injury and death. The latest rollover of a tractor-trailer on Highway 401 near Chatham Ontario is another example of this fact.
A video was posted by the OPP on their Twitter account describing the collision. The video showed the final rest position of the truck that was lying in the median parallel to the travel lanes of the highway. Portions of the median cable barrier could be seen in front and behind the truck. Had the truck been out of control and approaching the barrier at a significant angle the final rest orientation of the truck would not be as shown in the video. Rather, it is more likely that the truck simply rolled over the barrier. For many years there has been no public discussion about issues like these, where a roadside barrier is too low to prevent rollovers of large vehicles. In fact a low barrier can enhance the likelihood that a large truck will rollover and the collision consequences can be increased. But at no time have police made the public aware of this important danger. The latest protocols for proper barrier characteristics are contained in the MASH manual but it is likely that no one in the police community has ever trained investigating police officers about such important requirements. This results in dangerous conditions existing for any occupants of large vehicles, such as tractor-trailers, inter-city buses and similar vehicles. By failing to inform the public the police become enablers of dangerous situations no different than if police simply ignored drivers who drove impaired, or if vehicle maintenance defects were similarly ignored.
The scientific community has known for decades that collision consequences are related to three basic causes HVE: The Human, The Vehicle and the Environment. Conveniently, the Environment, or dangers that exist due to roadway conditions, is often ignored by police because they are paid by those whose responsibility it is to maintain those roads to a properly safe standard. The Ontario government is the agency that is responsible for the conditions existing on Highway 401 yet they are also the same entity that pays the salaries of the Ontario Provincial Police. When such conditions exist checks and balances must exist to insure that this conflict of interest does not endanger the public.
UPDATE: October 6, 2023, 0745 hours
Subsequent photos from other entities suggest the tractor-trailer may have entered the median initially at a significant angle, possibly coming close to opposing lanes, before being deflected back toward its own side of the highway and rolling over. While some benefit would have been gained from this deflection the resultant rollover becomes unpredictable with respect to injury causation. If this had been a fully-loaded inter-city bus where many passengers are often unrestrained ejection could have occurred and the results could have bee catastrophic. Just because the injury consequences to the driver of the truck were minimal only means that rollovers can be unpredictable, but not always benign.
There is no publicly-available tracking of collisions involving the Highway 401 median barrier and therefore much of its performance is kept secret. While police spend a great deal of time documenting the evidence it is never shared with the public that needs to be informed.
How Do Transit Bus & Cyclist Travel Paths Change With Installation Of A New Cycling Lane?
Further analysis has been completed by Gorski Consulting at the Colborne Street site from video documentations completed on August 29, 2023. In a recent article Gorski Consulting reported how cyclist travel paths changed as a result of the new cycling lane. Now additional analysis has been completed which shows how the travel paths of City of London transit buses have also been affected by the new cycling lane.
It can be recalled that the lateral travel paths of four categories of traffic units were reported in recent Gorski Consulting articles. Cyclists, Transit buses, large trucks and light duty motor vehicles were the four categories. This data was from a time when a cycling lane did not yet exist on Colborne Street. Then in August, 2023, the City of London completed installation of the cycling lane. Now we are attempting to compare the travel paths of these four categories of traffic units to determine if and how the cycling lane installation made a difference. Analysis has now been completed on two of those four categories, cyclists and transit buses and the results are shown in the table below.
For example, before the cycling lane was installed the average lateral position of cyclists was 0.71 metres west of the edge of the concrete gutter of the northbound lane of Colborne. After the cycling lane was completed the average lateral position of cyclists was reduced to 0.58 metres. So cyclists appear to have moved closer to the right curb after the installation of the cycling lane. It can also be seen in the above table that the variance in those travel paths was reduced.
With respect to City of London Transit buses the average lateral position was 0.87 metres before the cycling lane was completed. But after completion of the cycling lane that position became 1.57 metres.
An important observation is that, before the cycling lane transit buses and cyclists travelled close to each other (cyclists 0.71 metres, transit buses 0.87 metres) but after the cycling lane installation that gap became approximately one metre (cyclists 0.58 metres, transit buses 1.57 metres). Although there are some negatives with installation of a painted cycling lane this study shows that there are some positive effects on cyclist safety,
It needs to be emphasized that these findings are limited. They only discuss the average lateral positions of these units, not how they behave when they encounter each other. Do transit buses move away from cyclists when passing them and is this avoidance greater when a cycling lane exists? That question still remains to be reviewed. Unfortunately there are very few northbound transit buses travelling through the site so the opportunities of documenting one which is passing a cyclist are few. Our data shows that a northbound transit buses only passes through the site once every fifteen minutes.
Analysis is progressing with the documentation of the other two categories of traffic units: large trucks and light-duty vehicles.
There are actually very few large northbound trucks passing through the site. Instead this category contains over-size delivery vans and some school buses.
There is an over-abundance of light-duty vehicles such that we must take only a small segment of this category. Arbitrarily, we have chosen to commence documentation at a half hour into the video and only through documentation of just 10 observations. Without such limitations we would have far too many observations.
Once this additional analysis is completed we will once again review the findings.
Latest Cycling Data From Colborne Street Traffic Study
Partial completion of analysis shows some interesting results from the latest documentations on Colborne Street in London, Ontario. An earlier article published on September 7, 2023 showed that helmet use was the highest compared to all other sites in London where documentations were conducted by Gorski Consulting. Now further analysis has been completed with respect to cyclist lateral paths within the new, painted cycling lane and these can be compared to the previous analysis where no cycling lane existed.
As shown in the photo below, the lateral path of cyclists was documented by creating orange dots across the width of the northbound lane of Colborne Street. The dots were 20 centimetres apart. The zero reference for these measurements was the edge of the concrete gutter.
As shown in the photo below the concrete gutter was about 41 centimetres wide. The zero end of the measurements was from this edge of the concrete gutter.
The table below shows the detailed data obtained from 26 observations of cyclists on Colborne Street before the cycling lane was created.
The next table shows similar data obtained from analysis of the August 29, 2023 observations when the cycling lane was completed.
Overall the data shows some differences in the lateral paths of cyclists and these differences are summarized in the table below.
As shown in the above table the overall lateral paths of cyclists riding before the creation of the cycling lane was 0.71 metres west of the edge of the concrete gutter. After the cycling lane was added the average path was o.58 metres. Thus, overall, cyclists tended to ride closer to the right curb after the cycling lane was completed.
Also the variation in those travel paths was higher before the cycling path was completed. The standard deviation in those paths was 0.3860 metres before the cycling lane completion and only 0.1894 metres after the cycling lane was completed. The reason for the higher variance in travel paths can be seen in the table of detailed motions shown above. Four cyclists were observed to travel outside of the zone where the cycling lane would have existed. These four cyclists are noted below showing the date of the observation followed by the observation number for that date:
Apr 12-2
Apr 14-7
Apr 14-9
Jun 8-12
The precise travel paths taken by these four cyclists can be seen the table of detailed paths above.
In contrast not a single rider maintained a path outside of the cycling lane after the lane was completed. The closest that a cyclist came to riding outside of the cycling lane is observation “Aug 29-16”. This observation involved a female rider who was passing a slower cyclist as shown in the frames below taken from the videos.
At this time the documentation of the cyclist motions have been completed from the August 29, 2023 study. We still need to document the paths of light-duty motor vehicles, London City Transit Buses and heavy trucks/buses. Such analysis was already completed (and reported previously) for the motor vehicles when the cycling lane did not exist. Once the August 29th data is completed it will be interesting to see how the travel paths of those motor vehicles were changed by the creation of the cycling lane. This research will be reported shortly once it is completed.
Vast Differences in Cyclist Helmet Use Across City of London
Surprisingly, there is a vast difference in cyclist helmet use across the City of London Ontario. Equally surprising is the lack of concern or recognition demonstrated by official entities such as the City of London, Police and organized cycling groups.
These findings stem from recent cyclist observations by Gorski Consulting. The observations are summarized from the 2021 through to 2023. They are comprised of documentations of cyclists riding along streets throughout London, from observations along multi-use paths such as the Thames Valley Parkway (TVP) and from observations from specific sites where traffic studies have been conducted, such as Colborne Street at St James Street.
The observational data from across the City from 2022 shows that, of 1030 cyclists who were observed, 64.4 percent were not using helmets. We also selected the more specific population of cyclists who were observed riding on sidewalks in 2022, a total of 365 riders, and found that 76.7 percent were not using helmets.
Even less cyclists wore helmets in specific neighbourhoods such as along Hamilton Road in south-east London. Observations were made along Hamilton Road between Highbury Ave and Adelaide Street through 2021 up to the first quarter of 2023. This revealed that, out of 64 cyclists, 56 were not wearing helmets, resulting in a non-use rate of 87.5 percent. These numbers demonstrate the lack of basic safety precautions used by some cyclists, many who still do not believe that helmets improve their chances of reducing the severity of their injuries.
In contrast we also looked at cyclist helmet use at three locations along the Thames Valley Parkway. This 2021 data from 452 observations showed that just 27.2 percent of riders were not wearing helmets. Given the numbers involved this cannot be a statistical glitch, but suggests a real difference exists.
Even more remarkable is the data recently obtained from the specific site of Colborne Street at St James. This is the site where substantial traffic documentations have been conducted in 2022 and 2023. Our interest at this site was to understand how the painting of a new cycling lane on Colborne would change the lateral travel paths of motor vehicles and cyclists. While conducting these observations we recognized the large percentage of cyclists who were wearing helmets and we decided to examine this more closely. We found that, out of 54 observations of northbound cyclists on Colborne just 13.0 percent were observed not to be wearing helmets.
Why do such stark differences exist in various neighbourhoods of London? Hamilton Road has experienced several fatal cyclist collisions yet there has been no information revealed about how those collisions occurred and whether helmet use was a factor. Differences in road widths also play a role. Colborne Street, where almost everyone wears a helmet, has much wider lanes than Hamilton Road. The involvement of such factors need further study. As the population of cyclists increases in London the probability that more cyclist collisions will occur is inevitable. Yet no one is conducting cyclist safety studies in London except Gorski Consulting.
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