Building a Bike-forward Future.
Replica reveals where Alameda County, CA planners can build alternative infra that will be used, useful, and safe.
When vehicle trips are replaced by bike trips, cities enjoy reduced congestion, air pollution reductions, and traffic safety improvements. In recent years, local and regional governments have recognized the benefits of robust cycling infrastructure, but the limited availability of financial resources to fund new infrastructure has forced planners to make difficult decisions about where to target upgrades to meet existing and latent demand. Traditional tools, like physical counts and stakeholder outreach, add cost and schedule.
Fortunately, Replica makes it easy to quickly identify where bike trips are occurring and where they’re being made by people who may not have access to vehicles. It’s also possible to identify high-frequency short-distance OD pairs where current drivers might be converted to cyclists.
In this view of Alameda County, we’ve used Replica to show us non-motorized trips of at least one mile in length. This distance filter is added on the theory that longer bike and walking trips may reflect constrained mode choice options. Targeted infrastructure improvements to benefit these trip makers could deliver the greatest margin of safety and congestion mitigation improvements.
When we view our filtered trips alongside the Alameda County bike map, we see that several areas with significant bike and pedestrian activity are already well-served by bike lanes, including downtown Oakland and downtown Berkeley along with good coverage across most of the southern end of the county. On the other hand, we see high volumes of non-motorized trips occurring southeast of Downtown Oakland, in Allendale and Maxwell Park, and further south, in Castro Valley. Existing bike infrastructure is fairly limited in these areas. Planners seeking to match targeted improvements to areas of existing demand might focus in those neighborhoods.
Over the past two years, we’ve worked with Caltrans, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), and Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) to provide mobility data and transportation insights for the Sacramento region and we’re excited to bring the same value to everyone in California.
Through March 31st, Replica’s Places and Trends products are available at no cost to all public sector employees in California. Sign up today for immediate access.
The trial will include access to two Replica Places Megaregions — Northern California and Southern California — covering the entirety of the state of California, as well as Nevada. Together, these two models cover 42 million people.
