A precondition for the promotion of cycling in cities and urban areas is to provide an attractive and safe cycling network. In this regard the role of cycle lanes forming part of the carriageway itself or as marked paths is increasingly important. On road cycling facilities are classified in cycle lanes ('Radfahrstreifen'), which are reserved for bicycles only, and protective lanes ('Radschutzstreifen'), which can be used by vehicles as well. A protective lane provides a space on the carriageway for bicycles, which vehicles are only allowed to use if needed and without posing a danger to cyclists. The first goal of the project was to determine the potential danger for cyclists on main roads with and without protective lanes. The second goal was the evaluation of the influence of cycling on the capacity and level of service of road sections in dependency of protective lanes. As part of the processing the state of knowledge regarding cycling in mixed traffic was researched and processed. This included a municipal research for current and future planned use of protective strips. For the determination of hazard potential traffic safety analysis was performed by the analysis of accident data. Evaluations were made for defined section types. At the same time, the transport behaviour was analyzed based on video observations on carriageways with and without protective strips. For those were, amongst others speeds of vehicle and bicycle traffic as well as overtaking and spacings recorded and evaluated. The video observations were carried out both on two-lane and four-lane routes. Since not all possible traffic volume constellations could be observed, a microscopic simulation was carried out based on the survey data. With the simulation traffic quality as a function of bicycle influence could be determined also for currently unobservable traffic volumes of vehicle and bicycle traffic. As a result the accident occurrence and influence factors on accidents for cycling in mixed traffic with and without protective strips are evaluated. For the different studied section types, the main influencing factors are named on the traffic quality and partially quantified. For motor vehicle traffic quality levels for the cross-section types and traffic volume combinations (vehicles/bicycles) were determined according to the HBS - categorization. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting