alt Hacker NewsDid they observe more crashes on roads that received upgrades? Doesn't sound like it, these are overall numbers. Maybe more people are walking/biking now, maybe just noise (10 and 18 ped deaths is really good for a major city already, in LA it's 160+).
Your personal theory is refuted by studies in the US, here's the classic lit review on this subject if you're interested: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2776010/
> Did they observe more crashes on roads that received upgrades?
No statistically significant correlation.
From my personal observations, sabotage of arterials resulted in a lot of traffic shifting onto the side streets that are much less safe. But our local DoT doesn't have enough traffic data to confirm or disprove this, I tried to FOIA it.
> Your personal theory is refuted by studies in the US, here's the classic lit review on this subject if you're interested: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2776010/
Look at the dates on these studies. Nearly all of them come from the period of the global crime drop, a result of the leaded gasoline phaseout.
I recently tried to replicate some of the studies of bike lane effects and quite often found the _opposite_ of the original studies. For example, in Seattle the business tax receipts declined more steeply on streets within 1 block of a protected bike lane compared to controls.