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Parking Lane Width and Bicycle Operating Space (USA)

This study tests the hypothesis that marking narrower parking lanes can create additional operating space for bicyclists by inducing motorists to park closer to the curb. The results, published in 2011, imply that in cities that display this level of response to parking lane width, additional operating space for bicycling can be gained by marking narrower parking lanes.

Parking offset (i.e., distance between the curb and a parallel parked car) was measured along two multilane urban arterials just outside Boston, Massachusetts, with parking lanes ranging from 6 to 9 ft wide. As parking lane width grew in progression from 6 to 7 to 8 to 9 ft, the fraction of cars parked more than 12 in. from the curb, the legal limit, increased in a corresponding progression from 1% to 13% to 44% to 60%. The authors argue that 95 percentile parking offset is a better measure of impact on bicyclist operating space than is mean parking offset, because when riding next to a parking lane, cyclists tend to choose a path that envelopes most parked cars, such that they need to deliberately maneuver around only about one parked car out of 20. With each additional foot of parking lane width, 95 percentile offset increased by about 5 in., for a response of 0.44 ft/ft or m/m. Multivariate regression indicates that wide vehicles (e.g., vans, large sport-utility vehicles) partially compensate by parking about 1 in. closer to the curb. Effects of adjacent lane width, whether there is an adjacent bike lane, and parking regulation type (meter or not) were found to have no significant impact on parking offset. These results imply that in cities that display this level of response to parking lane width, additional operating space for bicycling can be gained by marking narrower parking lanes.

The research was published in the TRB’s Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2190 which contained six papers that explore the influence of the built environment on route selection for bicycle and car travel; automated bicycle counts; multimodal travel choices of bicyclists; effects of gender on commuter cycling and accident rates; on-street bicycle facility configuration effects on bicyclist and motorist behavior; and parking lane width effect on bicycle operating space.

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