06/12/2026
🚨 BREAKING: A massive study just settled one of cycling's longest-running arguments: not all bike lanes are created equal.
Researchers at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering analyzed roughly 72 million Citi Bike trips in New York City between 2013 and 2024 - one of the largest datasets ever used to study how cycling infrastructure shapes real-world ridership. Their conclusion is striking, and a little uncomfortable for some city planners.
Protected bike lanes - the kind with a physical barrier between you and traffic - drove a real, measurable jump in ridership. Painted lanes and sharrows? Once the researchers controlled for everything else, the boost essentially vanished.
At first glance, both types looked like winners. Stations near new protected lanes saw trips climb by an average of 18%. Painted lanes and sharrows weren't far behind at around 14%.
But correlation isn't causation. So the team applied two heavy-duty statistical tools - propensity score matching and difference-in-differences analysis - to compare similar locations and strip out the neighborhoods that were already trending toward more cycling anyway.
When the dust settled, only one type of infrastructure held up.
Protected lanes produced an average of 379 additional rides per station, per month after installation. Painted lanes and sharrows showed no statistically significant causal effect at all.
"Painted bike lanes and sharrows may cost less and face less political pushback, but we now have evidence at a massive scale that protected bike lanes are really what can move the needle on ridership," said lead author Marcel Moran.
The study, published in npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport, also found the effect wasn't uniform across the city. Protected lanes worked best in places where cycling was already a realistic option.
"Protected bike lanes seem to work best where cycling was already a realistic option for people," said co-author Malik Salman.
And here's the part that should interest a lot of us.
In neighborhoods with the highest share of residents aged 60 to 79, protected lanes delivered some of the strongest ridership gains of all. The researchers suggest older adults may be especially responsive to infrastructure that reduces the perceived risk of mixing it up with traffic.
That tracks, doesn't it? Give a 65-year-old a strip of paint next to four lanes of cars, and they'll find another route - or skip the ride entirely. Give them a proper protected lane, and suddenly that trip to the shops or the morning loop feels doable again.
The takeaway is hard to argue with. Paint is cheap and politically easy. A line on the asphalt lets a city claim it's "pro-bike" without taking road space from drivers. But this data suggests it does little to actually get more people pedaling.
Real separation from traffic is what changes behavior - especially for the riders who have the most to lose in a collision.
It's a finding cycling advocates have argued for years. Now they have 72 million trips' worth of evidence behind them.
Would a protected lane get you riding more often - or are you happy to take your chances with the paint?
