Below is feedback that Cary on Bikes has provided to Cary Staff and Cary Council on the draft update of the Cary Bike Plan in December 2025.
Board of Directors
Chuck Bryan · Steve Goodridge · Rob Weintraub · Rob Garner · Paul Black
December 16, 2025
Cary Council
Todd Milam, Project Manager, Cary Bike Plan
Cary Department of Planning and Development Services
Re: Feedback from Cary on Bikes for the Draft Cary Bike Plan
Dear Cary Council and Cary Staff,
Cary-area members of Cary on Bikes, a partner of the Oaks and Spokes bicycle advocacy organization, are pleased to respond to Cary’s invitation for feedback on the draft Cary Bike Plan. Our members have the collective experience of cycling through Cary for hundreds of thousands of miles for a wide range of purposes and at a wide range of speeds, traveling by bicycle alone and with our friends and family members of all ages and abilities. We hope that our knowledge and experience can be helpful to Cary as the Bike Plan is finalized and implemented.
SUPPORT AND APPRECIATION
We wish to express our enthusiastic support for the following aspects of the draft Cary Bike Plan:
Providing Destination Access for All Ages and Abilities
The Bike Plan’s vision, reinforced throughout the document, is to support travel to everyday destinations by bicyclists of all ages and abilities. We think the plan’s vision makes it clear that (1) Cary supports and prioritizes “riding to go somewhere” and not just “going somewhere to ride,” (2) Cary recognizes that cyclists of different ages and abilities have different needs for safety and comfort, and (3) Cary recognizes that many important daily destinations in Cary are located where they can be accessed only by roads that are challenging, unpleasant, or unsafe for use by a broad demographic of bicyclists, especially children and seniors. We believe that the ability to access everyday destinations by bicycle is of tremendous value to autonomy and health for young, old, and low-wealth populations, and for anyone who does not drive a motor vehicle. For kids between ages 10 and 16, independent travel by bicycle fosters development into more resilient, self-reliant adults.
Identifying Essential, Priority Corridors That Serve Destinations
We applaud that the Bike Plan’s Vision Network includes practically every thoroughfare in Cary because these thoroughfares host most of the essential destinations that utility bicyclists of all ages and abilities need to access, and they are often unavoidable for bicycle travel. We are also pleased to see other facilities such as pleasant neighborhood streets and greenways leveraged by the plan to supplement the thoroughfares by offering cyclists the choice of alternative routes where possible.
Recognizing Gaps in the Low-Stress Bicycling Network
We are encouraged that the Bike Plan recognizes the many gaps that exist in Cary’s existing network of low Level of Traffic Stress (LTS) neighborhood streets, greenways, and bikeways that would otherwise facilitate more bicycling trips to more destinations by a wider demographic of bicyclists. The Plan also recognizes that ongoing patterns of development in Cary will continue to create isolated segments of low-stress infrastructure that provide diminished bicycling utility unless they are connected. We are pleased that the Plan proposes policy changes that could build more contiguous bicyclist-friendly routes and fill gaps in the existing network.
Optimizing and Protecting Funding for Active Transportation Projects
We strongly support the Bike Plan’s recommendation to direct payment-in-lieu fees into a designated bicycle and pedestrian funding account when constructing bicycle and pedestrian facilities in conjunction with isolated private developments would not provide useful connections for many years. Obtaining right-of-way dedications during development while banking funds dedicated to constructing bike/ped transportation facilities will enable Cary to plan strategically and fill gaps to build a more contiguous bicycling network with higher utilization. We think strategic use of developer fees is especially important in Cary, as other state and federal funding sources for bicycle and pedestrian projects have been threatened or eliminated.
SUGGESTED AREAS OF IMPROVEMENT
We have identified the following as primary areas of concern where we suggest improvements to the draft Bike Plan:
Hazards Associated with Two-Way Bike Lanes and Sidepaths
Car/bicycle collision data from Cary¹, Orlando², and other cities in the US shows that bicyclists riding opposite the normal direction of vehicle traffic suffer a crash rate about five times that of bicyclists riding with the normal direction of traffic when traveling on roadways, bike lanes and parallel paths if there are a significant number of driveways and intersections. Drivers who turn and enter across bike lanes, sidewalks and sidepaths do not scan for contra-flow movements effectively; this problem is especially dangerous where bicyclists travel at higher speeds (e.g. downhill, e-bikes, and athletic cyclists). Two-way parallel bikeways also complicate left turns for bicyclists in or out of the facility and can lead to unconventional and unpredictable movements by novice bicyclists at junctions. We are concerned that the two-way separated bike lanes and two-way sidepaths featured in the draft Bike Plan will have a much higher crash rate for bicyclists, compared to single-direction bikeways in typical street corridors.
Most cities that have employed two-way bike lanes and sidepaths in urban corridors have encountered elevated bicyclist injury rates and have since stopped building them beside roadways, except in special circumstance corridors where there are minimal driveway and intersection conflicts, such as along a riverfront, lakefront, freeway, or rail line. We urge Cary to update the Bike Plan text to caution readers about two-way bike lanes and sidepaths and to recommend – explicitly – that two-way parallel bikeways be avoided except in strategic locations with few or no driveways or intersections, with clear examples. We are worried that without such caution, decision makers may be tempted to shoe-horn two-way bikeways into high-conflict corridors to save the ROW space that would be required for two single-direction bike lanes.
Performance Metrics of Success
The Measuring Success chapter of the Bike Plan proposes metrics in the form of number of miles of bikeways built, amount of funding spent on bikeways, and number of programs implemented. We recommend instead measuring Cary’s performance in public, human benefit terms such as bicyclist trip counts, bicyclist mode share, bicyclist crash rates, and bicyclist Killed/Serious Injury (KSI) rates per capita and per million miles of bicycling. Just as it would be inappropriate to measure public health success in terms of the volume of pharmaceuticals sold, we think the Bike Plan success metrics should focus on the welfare of bicyclists.
Measuring success based on bicyclist utilization and safety can encourage the targeting of public investments where they will make the most difference, such as bridging important gaps in the low-LTS network and reducing the harm of the high injury network. Modern, camera-based portable traffic monitoring systems can measure not only bicyclist counts, but also bicyclist speed, bicyclist position, and bicyclist direction. By collecting these data on our streets over time, and combining it with crash data analysis, Cary can evaluate the results of individual engineering projects and education, encouragement, and enforcement programs to determine what is effective and what is not.
A bicycle plan only works well when it is implemented by all Town Departments. Meaningful next steps (section 5) should include required communication and reporting between all relevant departments within the Town of Cary. At least annually, those responsible for Town Planning, Road Maintenance and Public Safety (i.e. police) should meet and review planning and progress.
Thoroughfare Crossing Treatments
The draft Cary Bike Plan offers little guidance on solving a documented major concern expressed by Cary residents: unsafe crossings of major thoroughfares like Maynard Road that interrupt the low-LTS neighborhood street network at non-signalized locations. Toucan crossings appear to be the only treatment for thoroughfare/local street junctions described in the Plan, but toucan crossings do not accommodate existing motor vehicle movements. We request that the Cary Bike Plan include a comprehensive list of engineering options that will allow bicyclists (and pedestrians) of all ages and abilities to cross thoroughfares at these locations. Options should include adding full signalization, and the discussion should include using safety analyses and forecasts of potential bicyclist and pedestrian usage as warrants for signalization.
Bridging Gaps between Neighborhood Bikeways
The Bike Plan describes Cary’s limited connectivity between low-speed local streets within residential neighborhoods and important destinations such as shopping centers and schools, but offers little or no recommendations on how to improve this connectivity without relying on major thoroughfares. Other communities have used a variety of retrofit and new-development facilities to improve direct connectivity between residences and destinations without leaving low-speed streets, such as:
– Building short connector paths for bicyclists and pedestrians between adjacent neighborhoods and to activity centers
– Increasing direct low-speed connectivity for all vehicle types between neighborhoods and activity centers
– Combining increased connectivity of low-speed streets with bicycle-permeable traffic diverters to limit cut-through motor traffic in new and existing neighborhoods
These treatments may be combined in series to produce longer cross-town bicycle boulevard routes that are more pleasant and suitable for family and casual bicycling than thoroughfares. We recommend that these strategies be added to the Neighborhood Bikeway Network chapter of the Plan.
Connections to Other Municipalities
Cary’s location near the heart of the Triangle makes connectivity to Raleigh, Morrisville, and Apex important for many bicycling trips. Although the draft Plan describes how major highways between these municipalities create barriers to bicycling, the draft Plan provides no recommendations on how to bridge these barriers. We suggest that identification of key bicycling connections between Cary and surrounding municipalities should be a high priority for the Cary Bike Plan and future transportation investments.
Education Targeting
Cary, like much of the US, suffers from very low levels of bicycle literacy among both the bicycling and motoring populations. Many residents are confused about important aspects of traffic law and best operating practices. For instance, most drivers don’t know that crossing a solid centerline to pass a bicyclist when safe is not only legal under state law, but legally required in some situations³. Many Cary bicyclists involved in crashes are riding against traffic or riding at night without lights. Yet most public bicycling education campaigns are poorly targeted and too general to be effective. We recommend that the Cary Bike Plan call for focused education of motorists and bicyclists that addresses the key knowledge gaps and behavior issues that most impact public safety. Our members have seen forms of this kind of education delivered a) in advertisements on buses, b) painted on the back of police and City vehicles and c) on mobile signs. This plan should explore more alternative ways to reach drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians.
Gap Prioritization
The draft Cary Bike Plan does not identify any key bikeway gaps or road corridors for prioritized improvements. Given the scale of need described in the plan, it is understandably difficult to develop a comprehensive prioritized list without more extensive research and public input. However, we suggest that including a handful of example priority gap closure locations would provide helpful guidance on how to leverage the strategies in the Plan to make highly impactful improvements for bicyclists, especially if they could be done in the short term.
Sincerely,
Cary-on-Bikes Board of Directors
Notes
¹ Bicycle – Motor Vehicle Collision Types, Frequency, and Severity in Cary, NC. https://medium.com/@stevengoodridge/bicycle-motor-vehicle-collision-types-frequency-and-severity-in-cary-nc-d37769e0f25f
² Data-Driven Planning for Bicycling. https://cyclingsavvy.org/2025/06/data-driven-planning-for-bicycling/
³ § 20-150(e). https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySection/Chapter_20/GS_20-150.html