Theses and Dissertations Collection

This thesis introduces a new method to prioritize bicycle facility improvement projects based on low-stress network connectivity. A bicycle network typically contains the following bicycle facilities: sharrows, bicycle boulevards, bike lanes, buffered bike lanes, and pathways. Using Moscow, Idaho as a case study, over 29 miles of bicycle facilities were analyzed to determine their impact on the bicycle network. The case study's bicycle facilities are part of a proposed improvement plan, which breaks up the bicycle facilities into 37 projects. To determine the importance of each project, a new prioritization method used open-sourced python code and geographic information systems (GIS) software to route every residential parcel to a defined "basket" of important destinations. (Routes were considered only if they were within a specified stress threshold.) The method produced a rank of each project's importance to the bicycle network, which provides planners and engineers valuable insight when facing challenging transportation investment decisions.