Increasing cycling attractiveness is essential for city planners to enable more sustainable mobility. One way to improve cycling quality is to reduce the frequency of stopping, thereby enhancing cycling flow. Against this backdrop, the city of Münster installed an open-source green wave assistant designed specifically for cyclists, located 110 meters in front of the traffic lights.

In their new article "Riding the Green Wave - How Countdown Timers at Bicycle Traffic Lights Impact on Cycling Behavior", Christina Brand, Thomas Hagedorn, Till Kösters, Marlena Meier, Gernot Sieg and Jan Wesse analyze the impact of the Leezenflow system. Therefore, they conduct a natural field experiment in real traffic and an online survey. This is the first comprehensive analysis of a bicycle green wave assistant, considering both its long-term impact in real traffic and user feedback. They find that the number of cyclists that have to stop at the red lights decreases by 6.6 %. Moroever, the data indicates a reported increase in cycling quality, and evidence for positive effects on traffic safety.

This article is published at the journal Travel Behavior and Society (Link to article).