By Charles Pekow — Separated bike lanes do improve safety. At least that’s what New York City found after examining a decade of safety improvement projects, including more than 100 miles of bike lanes. The New York City Department of Transportation examined before and after crash data for two or three years.
![](https://www.cyclingwest.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/200-West-Protected-Bike-Lane-IMG_8664.jpg)
With conventional bike lanes, the rate of injury increased 1.1 percent but it dropped 14.8 percent for protected lanes. But other safety improvements probably played a role, including signal timing, speed cameras, fewer traffic lanes and turn lanes.
Results do not include ebike and scooter users because of insufficient data.
See https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/safety-treatment-evaluation-2005-2018.pdf.