Updated: 6/8/12

The paper behind this presentation is now available (PDF, 6.3M).

Original Post: 5/10/12

Last week’s PSU Transportation Seminar was particularly thought-provoking.

Peter Furth of Northeastern University has developed a quantitative analysis methodology for evaluating the comfort level of links in a bicycle network (or put another way, how bike-friendly any given street is).

It aligns in many ways with the ideas in Portland’s Bicycle Master Plan, but adds a lot of rigor to the analysis.

I particularly like that tool identifies the networks that are comfortable for users of different skill/comfortable levels, starting with a child traveling alone as the base level.

I encourage you to watch the stream (with slides). There is also an audio-only file, but you’ll lose a lot of texture.