One of our volunteers, Parker Howell, recently got data from Provo Police showing the number and location of bike crashes and thefts between 2016 and 2019. The data is very interesting.
For crashes, it is clear that University Avenue and Freedom Boulevard are the most dangerous streets to ride your bike on.
Luckily, there are alternatives: the 200 E and 300 W bicycle boulevards. We applaud Provo City engineers for their work on the world-class 200 E bicycle boulevard. We invite them to work with us to develop the 300 W bicycle boulevard to include a safe crossing at 100 N, sharrows and a 20mph limit from 600 S to 500 N, bike lanes from 800 N to Cougar Boulevard, and sharrows and a 20mph limit again from Cougar Boulevard to the Provo River Trail. And when the time comes to redesign Freedom, we hope to be involved in that process.
This data is very interesting and possibly incorrect. It shows that bike thefts have been cut in half from 2018 to 2019 although we don’t know of any increased Provo Police efforts to decrease bike thefts. It could be that Spin scooters are now available for anybody to use which has cut down on bike theft for desperation to get somewhere.
However, the gradual decrease from years 2016 to 2018 are very promising to see. We suspect that at least part of that is due to the work of Provo Bicycle Collective, providing bikes to the community at little to no cost.
Check out the data for yourself! What do you think?
