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by cyberax16 hours ago |
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upvoteby Manuel_D15 hours ago|
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Why would cycling infrastructure reduce pedestrian incidents? They'd presumably decrease cyclist collisions. And since cycling has increased ~25% over the same time frame, steady rates of traffic incidents involving cyclists amounts to an increase in safety: https://www.kuow.org/health/2026-09-21/seattle-had-record-br...
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upvoteby cyberax14 hours ago|
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The infrastructure sabotage was done as a part of the Zero Vision program, that included both pedestrian and bike safety. It achieved neither.

> And since cycling has increased ~25% over the same time frame

The percentage of bike commutes in Seattle is in the noise, around 2-3% of the non-remote-work commutes. So the data is too noisy for any reasonable statistical significance.

For example, this year was deadly with 4 cyclist deaths (to date). In 2024 there were no cyclist deaths.

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upvoteby hamdingers16 hours ago|
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Did they observe more crashes on roads that received upgrades? Doesn't sound like it, these are overall numbers. Maybe more people are walking/biking now, maybe just noise (10 and 18 ped deaths is really good for a major city already, in LA it's 160+).

Your personal theory is refuted by studies in the US, here's the classic lit review on this subject if you're interested: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2776010/

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upvoteby cyberax15 hours ago|
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> Did they observe more crashes on roads that received upgrades?

No statistically significant correlation.

From my personal observations, sabotage of arterials resulted in a lot of traffic shifting onto the side streets that are much less safe. But our local DoT doesn't have enough traffic data to confirm or disprove this, I tried to FOIA it.

> Your personal theory is refuted by studies in the US, here's the classic lit review on this subject if you're interested: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2776010/

Look at the dates on these studies. Nearly all of them come from the period of the global crime drop, a result of the leaded gasoline phaseout.

I recently tried to replicate some of the studies of bike lane effects and quite often found the _opposite_ of the original studies. For example, in Seattle the business tax receipts declined more steeply on streets within 1 block of a protected bike lane compared to controls.

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upvoteby hamdingers15 hours ago|
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I tried giving you the benefit of the doubt, but your word choices make it clear you're not approaching this topic in good faith. This means your anecdotes are even more worthless than normal.

Get your attempted study published and reviewed, then I'll take your observations seriously.

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upvoteby cyberax14 hours ago|
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Do an experiment: try to find papers in pro-urbanist publications that look past 2016 in the US cities like SF or Seattle. 2016 is a good starting point, as it's the year when a lot of Vision Zero construction kicked off.

Go on, I'll wait.

Still waiting.

Oh, there are almost no publications? Wonder why. And the ones that do appear tend to be relegated to rarely cited journals. E.g.: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19427867.2022.2...

> We examined changes in counts and per capita rates of all, pedestrian, and bicyclist fatal motor vehicle collisions between 2007 and 2019 for 18 U.S. cities that took early Vision Zero pledges. Only 2 of the 18 cities have experienced statistically significant decreases in total fatalities since taking a Vision Zero pledge and only one city experienced a statistically significant decrease in pedestrian fatalities.

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