Two-way protected bike lane in Washington, DC.

Ordinary people continue to vote for protected bike lanes in huge numbers — with their pedals.

Northbound bike traffic during two hours on Chicago's new Dearborn protected bike lane (at the crossing of Kinzie Street, another protected bike lane) has doubled in the last year from 272 to 575, the city reported on Friday. That's an increase of 111 percent.

This on a street that's also getting much more law-abiding: the number of people on bikes who comply with red lights has increased from 31 to 81 percent since bikes got their own traffic signals.

Two weeks ago, I argued that in addition to safety, street designers should decide whether a bike lane works or not based on how many people actually use it. And a new slideshow by a team of leading biking scholars rounds up the increasingly overwhelming evidence that even in cities without longstanding native traditions of bike use, people overwhelmingly choose to ride in protected bike lanes:

As part of the Green Lane Project, we continue to compile statistics about the many advantages of building protected bike lanes. If you know of any other great ones that we should include, let us know.