Paved cycling routes compared: separation, surface and intersections

Paved cycling routes compared side by side differ most in what sits between the rider and traffic. One route is a separated lane with its own signal phases; another is a painted stripe beside 45 mph traffic; a third turns into a sidewalk without warning.

The Hudson River Greenway runs about 11 miles of asphalt beside Manhattan's West Side Highway, with a barrier and signals at major streets. Chicago's Lakefront Trail covers about 18 miles and passes under its busiest crossings.

What to take away

Separation is the first question

The clearest category is the separated bike lane. FHWA's planning and design guide describes a separated bike lane, also called a cycle track or a protected bike lane, and sets out design options for one-way and two-way arrangements and ways to provide separation.

What provides that separation is the question worth asking. A raised curb, a parking lane, flexible posts and a painted buffer are not equivalent, and they do not feel equivalent to ride.

New York's 9th Avenue protected lane uses parked cars and a painted buffer as its barrier, with bike signals where drivers turn across it. Minneapolis's Midtown Greenway runs roughly 5.5 miles in a below-grade former rail corridor, so no car crosses the path at street level.

Rank a route by asking what stands between you and traffic, then by asking how long that protection lasts. The second half of that question is the one people skip.

A protected corridor that runs for six miles and then deposits riders onto an arterial for two is not a protected corridor for the group riding it. Ask for the route as a sequence of sections with the separation named for each.

Seattle's Burke-Gilman Trail shows the pattern: about 19 miles of rail-trail asphalt, with riders on Ballard streets where the corridor is incomplete.

Surface follows the resurfacing cycle

On-road paved routes are maintained as part of the road, not separately. FHWA published a report on incorporating on-road bicycle networks into resurfacing projects because the resurfacing cycle is when a bicycle facility can be added or improved at low marginal cost.

For a traveler, surface quality on a road route reflects when that road was last resurfaced. A local agency can tell you.

Off-road paths age on their own schedule. The Minuteman Bikeway is asphalt on an old rail bed, patched by Arlington, Lexington and Bedford, the towns it crosses. Repairs on rail-trails like the Burke-Gilman fall to whichever city or agency owns each segment.

Comparing named paved routes

These seven routes are ordered by how much they keep cars away, then by what happens at junctions.

The checklist below applies to any candidate route, named or not.

Judge the route by its worst section

Averages flatter paved routes. A ten-mile route with nine excellent miles and one mile of shoulder riding beside fast traffic is a route with one mile of shoulder riding beside fast traffic. That section decides whether it suits the group you are with.

Named versions of that weak link are easy to find. The Lakefront Trail handles most crossings with underpasses, but not all of them. The Burke-Gilman Trail runs uninterrupted for miles and then hands riders to Ballard traffic.

Ask for the weak links by name. Agencies and local riders will both tell you, and the answers rarely match the promotional map. The questions to put to an operator are collected in questions to ask before booking a paved route, and the additions that fit around a main route are in paved route stops worth adding.

Common questions