Comfort evaluation of new bicycle paths with a laser profilometer: 15 years of experience in Belgium

Abstract

Longitudinal evenness of a road or bicycle lane surface is important for users’ comfort. For roads, indicators for evenness, their relation to users’ comfort in cars or trucks, and acceptance levels for existing or newly constructed roads exist for decades. In Belgium, four indicators called “Evenness Coefficients” (EC) are in use. Considering the surface as a wave, each EC evaluates a different range of wavelengths. EC0.5, for the shortest wavelengths, was introduced in 2013 by the Flemish National Road Administration (Fl-NRA). In 2013/2014 two measurement devices dedicated to longitudinal evenness evaluation of cycle infrastructure were put in service. Fl-NRA set requirements for roughness on new bicycle lanes expressed in EC0.5 and EC2.5 and uses a combined indicator for the evaluation of the global condition of their bicycle lane network in two-year intervals. The Belgian Road Research Centre (BRRC) helped investigating the potential causes in cases where the requirements were not attained. This contribution reports on more than a decade of experiences with dedicated measurement devices, on factors influencing users’ comfort of bicycle infrastructure, and on the “comfort score” obtained from a less costly “measuring bike”. The article concludes addressing perspectives on European standardisation actions for roughness measurements on bicycle infrastructure.