Making it easier for cyclists and transit users has often been found to increase business:
> Despite longstanding popular belief, bicycle lanes can actually improve business. At worst, the negative impact on sales and employment is minimal, according to a new study. Researchers studied 14 corridors in 6 cities -- Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Memphis, Minneapolis and Indianapolis -- and found such improvements had either positive or non-significant impacts on sales and employment. Essentially, adding improvements like bike lanes largely boosted business and employment in the retail and food service sectors.
I'm a cyclist and totally on board with this way of thinking. But this is simply not believable, and I'd like to see what confounding factors were at play:
> In 2013, a researcher at the University of Washington named Kyle Rowe looked at two shopping districts in Seattle that got put on road diets. Rowe compared sales taxes in these “Neighborhood Business Districts” with those in similar districts in the city that didn’t get bike lanes. In one NBD, which replaced car lanes and three parking spots with two bike lanes, sales closely tracked those in the bike-less areas, both in peaks and troughs. Conclusion: Bike lanes did nothing to reduce business. And in the other NBD, which replaced 12 parking spaces with a bike lane, sales quadrupled
This doesn't really prove anything. My observations from Vancouver where a lot of time and money has been spent on bike lanes over the last few years: (I'm a non car owner, mostly pedestrian)
- Pilot projects are not representative of actual long term use. When Burrard bridge lost a footpath to a temporary cycle lane, as a regular pedestrian commuter I saw a brief spike in cycle traffic but then a big drop off again.
- Cycle lanes have a negative impact on both car and foot traffic. The Burrard cycle lanes increased the length of my commute on foot (footpaths were converted to cycle lanes that went empty much of the time) and disrupted car traffic causing delays to drivers.
- Expensive but poorly thought out physically separated bike lanes made intersections more dangerous for cyclists (who would go faster and slow down less for cars) and pedestrians (cyclists are silent and frequently ignore traffic lights)
- On street parking is frequently lost to new cycle lanes that frequently sit unused.
- There are a lot of 'fair weather cyclists' who only ride in good weather. Pedestrian traffic seems much less weather dependent.
A pilot project like this doesn't necessarily reflect actual long term usage and also ignores the many negative effects and costs associated with cycle lanes. Existing cities that grew up around mixed pedestrian and car traffic are not necessarily well suited to increased bike traffic. Bikes are dramatically more dangerous to both cyclists and pedestrians and take up disproportionate space relative to their contribution to transport options.
My rust belt city removed main street parking in favor of bike lanes to the same effect but they did it as business was picking back up post-recession. It really pissed people off because all the businesses that folded were the ones that weathered the recession. Our city is somewhat of a commerce destination for the surrounding towns. When they decided to go the bike friendly route all the commerce redistributed itself. The businesses off of main street benefited greatly. They did bring back the prior on-street parking on most of main commercial area of main street and several years later there's a lot less boarded up store fronts.
I think the lesson is that you can't just cave to the bike special interests group or the walk-ability lobby, you have to look at how the economics of your city work and make sure that any changes you make will not shoot it in the foot.
This statement from the article would have me very worried about surviving the next downturn if I were a Toronto business owner.
>Toronto reports business receipts are up along the corridor as well, albeit a tiny 0.3 percent. The rest of the city was up 3.8 percent over the same period.
It would be very interesting to see more comparisons between merchant's perceptions of mobility and reality, but this[1] Toronto study is the only one I'm aware of. As expected, merchants were proven to not be credible sources.
> • 72% of visitors to the Study Area usually arrive by active transportation (by bicycle or walking). Only 4% report that driving is their usual mode of transportation.
> • Merchants overestimated the number of their customers who arrived by car. 42% of merchants estimated that more than 25% of their customers usually arrived by car.
Similarly, Toronto compared credit card transaction volume by mode in evaluating the Bloor bike lane. The area with the new bike lane saw increased card transaction volume, by slightly more than the control areas [2]. Merchants did report an increase in customers at this time.
Because even in city centres where most people walk, there’s a perception among business owners that they would lose a big part of their customers if parking were replaced with for example bicycle lanes, while the truth is the opposite.
Cycle Lanes have a similar impact. Cars go from A to B. Walking/Cycling goes via A to B via CDEF. Some studies have shown significant (150%) increases in business when they have been introduced.
Honestly, I don't feel the need to provide a source to support the claim that, if you decrease the costs of doing something, more people will do it. (Though, as I said a few posts ago, that's not to make any claim about the size of the effect, or whether adding bike lanes is enough on its own to make a difference.) If you want a citation, the Minnesota study seems like it supports exactly what I am saying.
> The presence of facilities also appears to be associated with higher amounts of riding, although the precise nature of the impact is still unclear. From this research, it appears that a facility can increase the amount of riding in an area even up to one and a half miles from the ends of the facility, but it is not clear whether the effect is larger for residents that are closer than this.
> But when 2,283 of the cyclists in these lanes were surveyed, 10 percent of them said they would have taken another mode of travel (i.e. car, public transit, by foot, etc.) if the lane hadn't been built. Another 1 percent said they wouldn't have taken the trip at all.
> This study finds a significant correlation between the presence of bicycle lanes and Capital Bikeshare usage, and also highlights the importance of population density and mixed-uses in encouraging ridership.
* https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2024399118
(Studies Europeans, though I don't see any reason why incentives would work on europeans and not at all on Americans--though maybe one would expect the effect size to be somewhat smaller in proportion to Americans' lower level of fitness)
> We find robust evidence for substantial short-run increases in cycling in European cities due to new provisional cycling infrastructure.
It bears repeating, though, that this isn't just about bike lanes.
The linked-to piece isn't only about bikes, but also improved pedestrian use.
> The results show that making streets friendlier for bikes — and sidewalks friendlier for pedestrians — is actually good for business. The rise of “complete streets” and “road diets,” as urban planners call them, has been a huge boon to businesses in cities.
What were the two cities you refer to?
In general, people tend to see the "spandex bros", but not the poorer people who bike due to economic necessity. If we know what cities you refer to we might be able to dig up the relevant traffic studies.
"transferred the benefit of lots of public property from car commuters and small retail businesses"
I wonder how many studies have to be done to prove small businesses grow when bike lanes are added. Box stores 20miles away suffer. I'm okay with that.
Business opposition is completely irrelevant on account of businesses having been proved wrong time after time on the impacts of adding bike lanes/removing parking/etc on their streets. Consistently incorrect.
To some extent, that's working as intended. If bike lanes reduce throughput for cars and decrease their utility, that pushes people towards using means other than cars, even if that doesn't mean biking.
> So what we need is financial data. Revenue numbers. Sales taxes. Credit-card receipts. Employment figures. That’s the good stuff. And for methodological rigor, we want to case-match our study areas to similar neighborhoods that didn’t get bike lanes — and to numbers for the city overall, to establish a baseline.
What we need is an identification strategy [0] that identifies some random or as-if-random source of variation in where bike lanes are deployed, and then compares sales data from places that do and do not get them. I'm not an expert on bike lanes, but from a quick look at the research in this article, none really has a convincing approach to this problem.
We also have lots of examples where a big observational literature says one thing, but the first time someone does an RCT, it falls apart, e.g. Vitamin D supplmements [1].
Personally, if I heard business owners saying over and over that bike lanes were hurting their sales, I would assume they knew something that was not captured in studies. (I am a biker who does not own a car, FWIW.)
Yeah, right. Study after study can prove whatever the author wants, but the facts of life are that nobody is going shopping on a bike. On a bus, sure, but a bike? I've lived in 2 cities with beautiful, wide bike lanes that nobody parks in (because of fear, not respect). In one they were never used, I've driven countless miles queuing in traffic next to them only to see 1 person per day (while seeing thousands of cars in the same period).
The only realistic use case was with part of the bike lane being next to a park, so it was used recreationally during weekends, mostly by spandex bros but also a wider audience when the weather was good.
People might say they want to bike more, and they would only if xyz, but actions speak louder than words, so perhaps it's time to accept we're wasting public space and money with all these projects that end up being good for nothing.
Lots of effects yes. I never suggested that bike lanes don't increase bike traffic however, I think it's pretty obvious that they will to some extent. I merely suggested that the large increase that might be observed in a temporary and well publicised pilot project likely greatly overrepresents the actual sustained usage.
Questions I would ask that I haven't seen addressed as part of Vancouver's bike lane push:
- Given the higher risks of cycling relative to driving or walking, how many extra deaths and injuries are associated with increased cycle use substituting for other forms of transport?
- How many people are switching to cycling from driving because you have made things worse for drivers, pedestrians and transit users by installing cycle lanes (less parking space available, fewer car lanes, dramatically more congestion during the construction process)
- Are pedestrians at greater risk due to the increased cycle use? (anecdotally it appears to me they are)
- Given all the other ways the transport budget could be spent and road space used, is building cycle lanes the best bang for the buck?
- What exactly are the goals of transport policy (hopefully not just 'increase the number of cyclists') and how are you measuring your success?
I have not studied ALL cities in the US, but in Seattle, SF, and Portland new bike lanes in more than 90% of cases carry _less_ traffic than the car lane that they had replaced. For the rest 10% there isn't enough data.
These things are self-reinforcing because as things stand bikes can't be used for commuting by most people because the infrastructure doesn't exist. Make it easier and safer to bike, and you'll see the demographics shift.
Another part of this problem is affordable housing. People can't live close to where they work. Reduce this problem along with improving biking infrastructure and you'll see an uptick in biking.
"Several businesses along Valencia Street have posted signs in their windows that read[...]"
Sure. Several businesses said the same thing about protected bus lanes, but studies have shown it's increased business for those on the path, because it makes it possible for _more_ customers to actually access their businesses.
Cars are fundamentally worse than public transportation or biking for small businesses as a whole, as they reduce density, and further consolidation, which favors larger businesses and hurts small businesses. The problem is that business owners tend to be drivers and their biases don't line up with reality, which is why you tend to see their personal politics interfere with their business interests.
This argument has the same line of reasoning that the businesses originally tried to use when the city did put in buffered bike lines - that removing unfettered automobile / truck access was the death knell to commerce
* https://medium.com/sidewalk-talk/the-latest-evidence-that-bi...
On two separate streets (Bloor above, Queen below):
* https://www.fastcompany.com/3067515/why-local-businesses-sho...
Making it easier for cyclists and transit users has often been found to increase business:
> Despite longstanding popular belief, bicycle lanes can actually improve business. At worst, the negative impact on sales and employment is minimal, according to a new study. Researchers studied 14 corridors in 6 cities -- Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Memphis, Minneapolis and Indianapolis -- and found such improvements had either positive or non-significant impacts on sales and employment. Essentially, adding improvements like bike lanes largely boosted business and employment in the retail and food service sectors.
* https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200422151318.h...
Meta-review:
* https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01441647.2021.19...
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