Estimating Potential Impact of Bike Lane Implementation (Case study of Seoul Metropolitan City)

Environmental issues resulting from climate change and energy crises have become global issues, and cycling has gained greater popularity for sustainable transportation. Though many cities are trying to build bicycle roads, it is not easy to implement bicycle roads because there is little available space for bicycle facilities. Therefore, road diets have become more popular in Korea. However, there has been no intensive research to date of their impacts. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the effects of road diets and construction of bike lanes. Every benefit, including energy benefit, environmental benefit, and health benefit is considered, while only time savings benefit has been considered in previous studies. The benefit analysis for the Seoul metropolitan area as a case study shows that road diets have a (1) time saving benefit for only five percent of the mode share and (2) enough total benefit even if bicycle mode share is less than two percent.