OPERATIONAL ANALYSIS OF BICYCLE INTERCHANGES IN BEIJING, CHINA

Beijing, a city with more than 10 million residents and nearly 8.4 million registered bicycles, has the highest bicycle ownership in China. In addition, Beijing has more than half a million motor vehicles, and that number is increasing at a rapid rate. To cope with this nonmotorized and motorized traffic, more than 50 interchanges with special facilities to accommodate bicycle traffic were built in Beijing during the last decade--more than half of all the interchanges in China are in Beijing. The operational experience of these bicycle interchanges is presented. The study indicates that a three-level cloverleaf interchange design with an exclusive bicycle facility can accommodate more than 28,000 bicycles per hour. A less sophisticated two-level rotary interchange can accommodate up to 21,500 bicycles per hour. Different adjustment factors were developed after an extensive study of existing bicycle operations in Beijing and other major Chinese cities. It is believed that the operational experience of these high-volume interchanges for nonmotorized transport will be useful to transportation engineers in other countries who are contemplating similar plans.