The Impact of Implementing Public Bicycle Share Programs on Bicycle Crashes

A docked public bicycle share program (PBSP) makes bicycles available to the public. There is limited evidence on the impact of PBSPs on safety. We estimated the impacts of implementing a PBSP on the likelihood of bicycle crashes using a difference in differences approach with repeated cross-sectional survey data (self-reported crashes) collected in 8 Canadian and US cities, from 2012-2014. Relative to control cities (Detroit, Philadelphia, Vancouver), we found that the odds of reporting a bicycling crash did not change after implementing a PBSP (New York, Chicago) and were lower in cities that had existing PBSPs (Boston, Montreal, Toronto).