For millions of Americans, the problem isn’t that their city lacks bike lanes. It’s that the bike lanes they see don’t feel safe, mostly because they aren’t.
A new study in the Journal of Cycling and Micromobility Research puts data behind that discomfort, finding that roughly 61 percent of paint-only bike lanes in the United States are located on “high-stress” roads — fast, multi-lane corridors where traffic speed and volume make riding uncomfortable for most people.
Given that an estimated 77 percent of on-road bicycle infrastructure nationwide consists of conventional painted lanes, that means the dominant form of U.S. bike infrastructure is frequently built in places that deter the very riders cities say they want to attract.
The research was led by Michael Garber, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California San Diego, who says the idea grew out of daily observation.
“I was inspired to write this study because many of the paint-only bike lanes I see in my day-to-day life are on roads with fast speeds that I know from both personal experience and research are not welcoming for would-be bicyclists,” Garber says, in an interview with Momentum.
One road west of Denver crystallized the issue.
“It has a bike lane that I’d like to use to get to a mountain bike trail, but the lane runs alongside two lanes of traffic with a 45 mph speed limit,” he explains. “So if I take that route, I ride on the sidewalk instead.”
That experience — a marked bike lane that even a transportation researcher avoids — led Garber to look more broadly.
“As I thought through the U.S. cities I’ve lived in and visited, I began to suspect that this type of bike lane may represent more the norm than the exception in the U.S.,” he says.
Measuring Stress at Scale
To test that suspicion, Garber analyzed stress-level ratings compiled by PeopleForBikes across 442 U.S. cities. The headline result aligned with what many riders already intuitively understand: not all bike lanes are created equal.
“The main goal of this study was to put a number on something that many people who have tried to ride a bike in the United States already know intuitively: that not all bike lanes provide a welcoming environment for riding,” Garber says.
In about a quarter of the cities studied, the average posted speed limit on roads with paint-only bike lanes was 40 mph or higher.
“That suggests that in many places, paint-only lanes are routinely being installed in environments that most people would not consider comfortable,” he says.
The findings also build on Garber’s earlier work in Atlanta, where he and his colleagues examined crash risk across different types of bike infrastructure.
“In earlier work in Atlanta examining crash risk across different types of bike infrastructure, we found that paint-only bike lanes had a higher crash rate than roads with no infrastructure at all, controlling for roadway type and socioeconomic conditions,” he says.
The implication is not that paint itself is inherently dangerous, but that context matters — enormously.
Bike lane study shows most bike lanes are painted and on high stress roads
Design Choices, Not Inevitable Outcomes
One of the more revealing findings in the study is that cities are not simply victims of their road networks.
“Roadway composition is not necessarily destiny,” Garber says. “Cities with a large share of high-speed, multi-lane arterials don’t necessarily have to place paint-only bike lanes on those roads, and some cities clearly chose not to.”
That distinction is critical for advocates. Even car-oriented cities can choose to avoid striping high-speed arterials and instead prioritize lower-speed corridors or install protected facilities where traffic volumes demand it.
National guidance is beginning to reflect that reality. In 2024, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials updated its bicycle facility recommendations to emphasize that as vehicle speeds and volumes increase, so should the level of protection. Meanwhile, the National Association of City Transportation Officials has long advised that conventional painted lanes are appropriate primarily on low-speed streets.
Garber is clear that paint-only lanes can play a role — under the right conditions.
“On lower-speed, lower-volume roads (e.g., with a speed limit of 25 mph or lower and only one travel lane in each direction), a paint-only bike lane can create clear space for bicyclists and can make riding feel more comfortable,” he says.
But when speeds and lane counts rise, paint alone does little to change the experience.
“On higher-speed, multi-lane roads, a stripe of paint alone does little to change how exposed and uncomfortable riding feels alongside high vehicle speeds and multiple travel lanes,” Garber says. “In those environments, paint-only lanes are unlikely to provide a safe or comfortable experience for most people.”
Riding Shouldn’t Require Bravery
At its core, the study speaks to a larger cultural issue: who feels welcome on American streets.
“For people in positions to influence the transportation system — traffic engineers, planners, and elected officials — I hope the takeaway is that the paint-only bike lane, currently by far the most common on-road bike facility, only works well under certain roadway conditions,” Garber says. “If the goal is to make bicycling appealing to more people, facility placement and roadway conditions should be better aligned.”
And for riders who feel uneasy, he offers a pointed reminder:
“Riding a bike shouldn’t require bravery. If it feels unwelcoming to ride where they live, that’s often a reflection of the roadway environment.”
For cycling advocates, that may be the most important line in the study. The problem isn’t a lack of lines on the map. It’s that too many of those lines are drawn where few people feel safe using them.
If cities want more people on bikes, the solution is straightforward: either slow the roads — or build infrastructure that truly protects the people riding on them.