6 ms·

Bike lanes are good for business

55 points by cainxinth 3y ago

tombert 3y ago
Even in NYC, which generally does have pretty good bike coverage in theory, people will still treat them as extra parking. Frustratingly, the most frequent offenders of this appear to be cops. I used to confront the cops when they did this but I've grown far too lazy for that now.
- repelsteeltje 3y ago
  From a driver's perspective it makes sense: park your car on the bike lane or side walk to avoid blocking car traffic. Never mind blocked cyclists or pedestrians. I've sometimes considered (but never followed through) parking my bicycle on the car lane. (Ie. Next to a police car.) As a passive aggressive gesture hoping to be forced to explain to a cop that I was just trying to avoid blocking the bike lane and side walks.
  - singhrac 3y ago
    Parking on a sidewalk is a violation of many rules and norms, but the one that matters the most to me is that people in wheelchairs cannot maneuver around these. I tried reporting some in my local neighborhood via 311 but it's pretty much useless (I'm fairly confident the car was an unmarked cop car anyway). I have yelled (successfully) at ebike riders that go on the sidewalk; they ended up apologizing to me even though I speak no Spanish and they spoke little English. There are tons of kids in my neighborhood and it takes a village etc.
    - tombert 3y ago
      Yeah, I don't have a wheelchair, but I do occasionally have one of those fold-up shopping carts that I use for getting groceries. When cars are parked on the sidewalk, it makes it extremely difficult to do anything, because there's not a ton of twisting I can do to maneuver around them. I often have to awkwardly lift the cart to put on the street, and then lift it again to put it back on the sidewalk. I hadn't even considered how bad it would be for people in wheelchairs.
      - repelsteeltje 3y ago
        Or a stroller.
  - ildjarn 3y ago
    Nice post but “car lane” is automobile propaganda
- Gigachad 3y ago
  In Australia this doesn't seem to happen nearly as much. The rules are enforced by the council rather than the police. It'll just be an employee of the council who walks down the street and prints off a fine for everyone parked incorrectly. Which presumably makes money for the council and covers the cost of the worker.
dfxm12 3y ago
I'm always surprised how emotional people get when dealing with anything that might challenge car supremacy. Supposedly, the market is supposed to make people lean towards what makes them more money, but that only works if the people involved behave rationally.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  A local metro area put in a light rail train down through a major city street. It was sold as a way to reduce congestion and bring more people and development opportunities through. The reality is a lot of small minority owned businesses couldn't survive the years of construction and reduced parking, and the trains didn't bring more shoppers through. A lot of homes and buildings were sold as taxes went up, but the new development were all luxury style apartments. The people who benefited were commercial developers and yuppie types, and the lower class, largely minority people who made up most of the area were pushed back into other neighborhoods. It turns out, judging the effects of an action like development requires a lot of local context, and people can quite rationally be upset that they are going to be sacrificed for someone else's gain.
  - debacle 3y ago
    What town was this in? We are fighting the same type of thing right now. They are trying to put in a light rail to bring in more "equity," while at the same time re-zoning the existing low income housing that they're claiming the rail is for for townhomes.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      You should fight for automated light metro. Just put the light rail on elevated viaducts (which wouldn't cost much more), and run the same trains fully automated (normally an option on those trains). The whole thing becomes cheap to run (which is where the costs are in modern cities), and much faster.
  - CalRobert 3y ago
    One problem is that decent transportation makes areas nicer and more appealing, so more people want to live there, which of course makes the existing housing stock more expensive. This is a consequence of decent transportation being so rare, sadly.
treflop 3y ago
In my perfect world: * there are dedicated bike lanes with barriers, taking away the stress of intermingling with bad drivers * there is secure public parking nearby that always has open spots, taking away the stress of driving around trying to find a spot * there are a few assorted accessibility parking spots scattered about, taking away the stress of having to walk/limp/wheelchair a far distance * there is nearby public transit, taking away the stress of trying to get home if I’m a little messed up I would be happy.
- CalRobert 3y ago
  One of the best ways to ensure there are spots available is to charge appropriately for them, but this has generally met with resistance.
  - treflop 3y ago
    I think a lot of paid parking has a lot of additional stress * trying to figure out if you are being ripped off, so you keep driving around to make sure there isn’t some much cheaper option * in some spots, worrying about having to go back and pay additional money if you are taking too long * worrying about leaving your car overnight My favorite paid parking area is downtown Pomona, California where there are a ton of city-run parking lots with easy payment with very affordable prices and even an option to extend your time until the morning just in case (and it’s like $2). Zero parking stress whenever I go to see a concert there.
    - CalRobert 3y ago
      Sure, but charging so little for such valuable land is effectively a subsidy for storing your private property on public land. Ideally there's: * market-rate parking (ensuring there are always spots) * a parking benefit district to benefit the area * No rules forcing people to build parking, instead letting the market decide the best use of land
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
yabones 3y ago
Of course. Because cars don't spend money, people do. The more efficiently humans are packed together, the more money-per-square-foot there is available. You could have a drive-thru with six lanes and a mile long driveway, and it still wouldn't do the same numbers as the dingy coffee stand by a bus station at rush hour. That a bicycle is more space efficient than automobiles shouldn't be surprising to anybody.
- trgn 3y ago
  You find it so obvious to be almost snarky about it. Almost no one in my city thinks like that, most see bikes only as recreational vehicle, or as the last resort for deviants and DUI-convicts. For these people, shopkeepers included, a bikelane is an assault on parking and therefore common sense.
  - digibeet 3y ago
    Fascinating that your perspective and 'common sense' is to be the complete opposite to mine. It is high time americans see the great future that is non-car focused but people orientated.
setgree 3y ago
> 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.) [0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2291629 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2291629 [1] https://twitter.com/JohnArnoldFndtn/status/1739696643459440853 https://twitter.com/JohnArnoldFndtn/status/17396966434594408...
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  From what it on the article, only one of the studies even tried to look at different kinds of streets. Anyway, my guess is this is not much a problem of identification, as it's a problem of determination. Somebody has to go and dictate what kind of business will thrive on what streets exactly, and at the same time, where people will go in their commute, and where they will go when shopping around. Every street trying to satisfy every need isn't working.
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  > 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 live in SF a few blocks from a very controversial new bike lane. The business owners hate it. It came at a time of economic change, with inflation and layoffs etc, so there’s a lot of pressure on small businesses city-wide. The city has said sales data for that neighborhood has dropped less than the city-wide average, and has shown to be more resilient. I was out getting coffee and overheard someone complain to a business owner about the “bike lane bad” sign. The owner repeatedly said it was bad for business, but couldn’t give an example. It was pretty heated until eventually the owner capitulated and said it was harder for him to park near his work. That was it. He wanted to park closer to work, it had no business outcomes. Another example of a business very publicly complaining that the bike lane was killing their business was interviewed in the press. In this interview the business owner admitted he struggled to afford the loans to repair his bar after flooding (pre bike lane flooding). The business was already collapsing, and he admitted he didn’t think many people drove and parked at his bar. The only examples I believe are the furniture and appliance stores. Bikers probably don’t pick up and shop for those items as much as car drivers. But of course I have no data.
mateo1 3y ago
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.
- spinningarrow 3y ago
  > nobody is going shopping on a bike I regularly go shopping on my bicycle - as much as I can, in fact.
- piva00 3y ago
  > but the facts of life are that nobody is going shopping on a bike. I do 99% of my shopping on a bike, even some smaller IKEA/furniture stuff I carry biking, just with a Chrome Cargo backpack. I think you are extremely biased to your locality... Probably have never lived in a well designed city where biking is not dangerous, is encourage through good urban design, and where cars are also penalised and discouraged by good urban planning. Like, that's ok, but this take just shows an extreme blidness to how things can be. Just visit the Netherlands, any medium to large city there, and you will be surprised about all the things people can and actually do on a bike. Also, cargo bikes are a thing. You can carry a lot in one. It's much cheaper to buy and maintain than any car you could imagine.
- akgerber 3y ago
  I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there's a pair of us — don't tell! They'd banish us, you know.
- 0_____0 3y ago
  Is this sarcasm? There's a lot of precedent for people living lives mostly on bike, where I live in the Northeast US the car ownership rate is about 50% among my peer group. I own a car but find it easier to do most errands by bike. I suspect that there are other issues with your environment that prevent people from successfully using cycling as a normal transit mode, assuming you're from the US or Canada, it's likely that distances are too great, or that despite bike lanes, common trips require biking along highway speed traffic.
lvl102 3y ago
Bike lanes in the US are useless outside of perhaps 3-4 cities (all with exceptional public transportation systems) And they’re really green vanity projects that do not deliver value to urban areas. Utilization is piss poor especially during winter months. Edit: I am not against bike lanes but they’re really the cheapest way for city planners and politicians to pull a publicity stunt. A proper way to increase bike utilization is to invest in public transportation and actually drive down car ownership. But, this is a very expensive (and might even be impossible) feat in the US. WFH is not helping the trend because it’s facilitating people further out of cities which, you guessed it, increases car ownership.
- looofooo0 3y ago
  With this argument no modal change can ever Happen.
- droopyEyelids 3y ago
  If anyone else was wondering, the 4 biggest cities in the USA are New York City: ~8.4 million Los Angeles: ~3.9 million Chicago: ~2.7 million Houston: ~2.3 million And they account for ~ 5% of the total USA population (17.3 million / 331 million) * 100 = 5.23%
  - vineyardmike 3y ago
    And these aren’t even the cities with great bike infrastructure. Sounds like we have a long way to go.
- bwanab 3y ago
  Bold statement with no evidence. I can assure you that they're well used in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville during the winter months as well as summer.
  - lvl102 3y ago
    I ride bikes in Cambridge. This is not true at all. Bike lane utilization during winter months goes down quite a bit in Cambridge. In many parts, they don’t even build bike lanes with snow removal in mind. It’s not even safe/practical to bike in snow.
billy99k 3y ago
Most people going shopping need to bring multiple bags home. How about if you have small kids? What about areas of the country that have winter 6 months out of the year? It might increase business for a very small and narrow demographic, but I seriously doubt this will be the case overall.
- NegativeLatency 3y ago
  Check out the style of bike called a bakfiets (or any other cargo bike) it's a game changer. I have carried my wife and groceries a couple of times, and also picked up lumber and tools with it. Granted they're expensive (compared to most bikes), but it costs me about an ebike most of the time that my car goes into the shop, and my e-bakfiets has never needed any repairs that I was not able to do myself (even if you take it some place it's much cheaper).
  - meragrin_ 3y ago
    > Check out the style of bike called a bakfiets (or any other cargo bike) it's a game changer. I have carried my wife and groceries a couple of times, and also picked up lumber and tools with it. Okay, I did. What is your definition of lumber? The bikes I saw would only be suitable for what I would consider "small sticks".
    - NegativeLatency 3y ago
      the lumber load was something like: - 6 2x4x12, strapped diagonally lengthwise on the top of the bin - big box of nails - air framing nailer - extension and air cords - pancake air compressor - other assorted stuff
      - meragrin_ 3y ago
        Have a link to the bin? All the bins I've seen don't look suitable for long lumber or are expensive enough where renting a truck is by far the cheaper route.
- 3y ago
mvdtnz 3y ago
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
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
abeppu 3y ago
I'm in favor of more bike lane infrastructure, but I think the evidence being cited here doesn't line up with the claims. The headline is "Bike lane are good for business" and immediately below it says "Study after study proves it" but: (regarding an SF study) > The results were mixed. > In the other district, sales tanked relative to the number of people a shop employed > “The takeaway is that it’s probably a minimal effect on businesses when you put in a bike lane,” (regarding another study) > Once again, the results were mixed. (regarding "the most definitive study"): > Like Poirier, Liu and Shi found that in many cases, only certain kinds of businesses benefited from the bike lanes and street improvements. The top-line the article is trying to draw is that there's some unambiguous evidence that it's "good for business", but really some businesses benefit, some don't, and some projects have little effect. The reports they're drawing on themselves seem biased or sloppy in how they handle evidence. One of the studies cited showed that businesses on the "road diet" being studied had a _lower_ percentage growth in revenue than the "Non-road diet" group (table 4), but the text of the report then decides that absolute sum of revenue growth is more important ... even the road-diet group was substantially larger both in terms of starting revenue and number of businesses. This kind of deceptive summarizing isn't going to help the bike-infrastructure cause, because the opponents to this kind of project can easily pick it apart. https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/yorkblvd_mccormick.pdf https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/yorkblvd_mccormick.pdf

55 points by cainxinth 3y ago

Even in NYC, which generally does have pretty good bike coverage in theory, people will still treat them as extra parking. Frustratingly, the most frequent offenders of this appear to be cops. I used to confront the cops when they did this but I've grown far too lazy for that now.

repelsteeltje 3y ago
From a driver's perspective it makes sense: park your car on the bike lane or side walk to avoid blocking car traffic. Never mind blocked cyclists or pedestrians. I've sometimes considered (but never followed through) parking my bicycle on the car lane. (Ie. Next to a police car.) As a passive aggressive gesture hoping to be forced to explain to a cop that I was just trying to avoid blocking the bike lane and side walks.
- singhrac 3y ago
  Parking on a sidewalk is a violation of many rules and norms, but the one that matters the most to me is that people in wheelchairs cannot maneuver around these. I tried reporting some in my local neighborhood via 311 but it's pretty much useless (I'm fairly confident the car was an unmarked cop car anyway). I have yelled (successfully) at ebike riders that go on the sidewalk; they ended up apologizing to me even though I speak no Spanish and they spoke little English. There are tons of kids in my neighborhood and it takes a village etc.
  - tombert 3y ago
    Yeah, I don't have a wheelchair, but I do occasionally have one of those fold-up shopping carts that I use for getting groceries. When cars are parked on the sidewalk, it makes it extremely difficult to do anything, because there's not a ton of twisting I can do to maneuver around them. I often have to awkwardly lift the cart to put on the street, and then lift it again to put it back on the sidewalk. I hadn't even considered how bad it would be for people in wheelchairs.
    - repelsteeltje 3y ago
      Or a stroller.
- ildjarn 3y ago
  Nice post but “car lane” is automobile propaganda
Gigachad 3y ago
In Australia this doesn't seem to happen nearly as much. The rules are enforced by the council rather than the police. It'll just be an employee of the council who walks down the street and prints off a fine for everyone parked incorrectly. Which presumably makes money for the council and covers the cost of the worker.

dfxm12 3y ago

I'm always surprised how emotional people get when dealing with anything that might challenge car supremacy. Supposedly, the market is supposed to make people lean towards what makes them more money, but that only works if the people involved behave rationally.

zdragnar 3y ago
A local metro area put in a light rail train down through a major city street. It was sold as a way to reduce congestion and bring more people and development opportunities through. The reality is a lot of small minority owned businesses couldn't survive the years of construction and reduced parking, and the trains didn't bring more shoppers through. A lot of homes and buildings were sold as taxes went up, but the new development were all luxury style apartments. The people who benefited were commercial developers and yuppie types, and the lower class, largely minority people who made up most of the area were pushed back into other neighborhoods. It turns out, judging the effects of an action like development requires a lot of local context, and people can quite rationally be upset that they are going to be sacrificed for someone else's gain.
- debacle 3y ago
  What town was this in? We are fighting the same type of thing right now. They are trying to put in a light rail to bring in more "equity," while at the same time re-zoning the existing low income housing that they're claiming the rail is for for townhomes.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    You should fight for automated light metro. Just put the light rail on elevated viaducts (which wouldn't cost much more), and run the same trains fully automated (normally an option on those trains). The whole thing becomes cheap to run (which is where the costs are in modern cities), and much faster.
- CalRobert 3y ago
  One problem is that decent transportation makes areas nicer and more appealing, so more people want to live there, which of course makes the existing housing stock more expensive. This is a consequence of decent transportation being so rare, sadly.

treflop 3y ago

In my perfect world: * there are dedicated bike lanes with barriers, taking away the stress of intermingling with bad drivers * there is secure public parking nearby that always has open spots, taking away the stress of driving around trying to find a spot * there are a few assorted accessibility parking spots scattered about, taking away the stress of having to walk/limp/wheelchair a far distance * there is nearby public transit, taking away the stress of trying to get home if I’m a little messed up I would be happy.

CalRobert 3y ago
One of the best ways to ensure there are spots available is to charge appropriately for them, but this has generally met with resistance.
- treflop 3y ago
  I think a lot of paid parking has a lot of additional stress * trying to figure out if you are being ripped off, so you keep driving around to make sure there isn’t some much cheaper option * in some spots, worrying about having to go back and pay additional money if you are taking too long * worrying about leaving your car overnight My favorite paid parking area is downtown Pomona, California where there are a ton of city-run parking lots with easy payment with very affordable prices and even an option to extend your time until the morning just in case (and it’s like $2). Zero parking stress whenever I go to see a concert there.
  - CalRobert 3y ago
    Sure, but charging so little for such valuable land is effectively a subsidy for storing your private property on public land. Ideally there's: * market-rate parking (ensuring there are always spots) * a parking benefit district to benefit the area * No rules forcing people to build parking, instead letting the market decide the best use of land
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

yabones 3y ago

Of course. Because cars don't spend money, people do. The more efficiently humans are packed together, the more money-per-square-foot there is available. You could have a drive-thru with six lanes and a mile long driveway, and it still wouldn't do the same numbers as the dingy coffee stand by a bus station at rush hour. That a bicycle is more space efficient than automobiles shouldn't be surprising to anybody.

trgn 3y ago
You find it so obvious to be almost snarky about it. Almost no one in my city thinks like that, most see bikes only as recreational vehicle, or as the last resort for deviants and DUI-convicts. For these people, shopkeepers included, a bikelane is an assault on parking and therefore common sense.
- digibeet 3y ago
  Fascinating that your perspective and 'common sense' is to be the complete opposite to mine. It is high time americans see the great future that is non-car focused but people orientated.

setgree 3y ago

> 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.) [0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2291629 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2291629 [1] https://twitter.com/JohnArnoldFndtn/status/1739696643459440853 https://twitter.com/JohnArnoldFndtn/status/17396966434594408...

marcosdumay 3y ago
From what it on the article, only one of the studies even tried to look at different kinds of streets. Anyway, my guess is this is not much a problem of identification, as it's a problem of determination. Somebody has to go and dictate what kind of business will thrive on what streets exactly, and at the same time, where people will go in their commute, and where they will go when shopping around. Every street trying to satisfy every need isn't working.
vineyardmike 3y ago
> 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 live in SF a few blocks from a very controversial new bike lane. The business owners hate it. It came at a time of economic change, with inflation and layoffs etc, so there’s a lot of pressure on small businesses city-wide. The city has said sales data for that neighborhood has dropped less than the city-wide average, and has shown to be more resilient. I was out getting coffee and overheard someone complain to a business owner about the “bike lane bad” sign. The owner repeatedly said it was bad for business, but couldn’t give an example. It was pretty heated until eventually the owner capitulated and said it was harder for him to park near his work. That was it. He wanted to park closer to work, it had no business outcomes. Another example of a business very publicly complaining that the bike lane was killing their business was interviewed in the press. In this interview the business owner admitted he struggled to afford the loans to repair his bar after flooding (pre bike lane flooding). The business was already collapsing, and he admitted he didn’t think many people drove and parked at his bar. The only examples I believe are the furniture and appliance stores. Bikers probably don’t pick up and shop for those items as much as car drivers. But of course I have no data.

mateo1 3y ago

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.

spinningarrow 3y ago
> nobody is going shopping on a bike I regularly go shopping on my bicycle - as much as I can, in fact.
piva00 3y ago
> but the facts of life are that nobody is going shopping on a bike. I do 99% of my shopping on a bike, even some smaller IKEA/furniture stuff I carry biking, just with a Chrome Cargo backpack. I think you are extremely biased to your locality... Probably have never lived in a well designed city where biking is not dangerous, is encourage through good urban design, and where cars are also penalised and discouraged by good urban planning. Like, that's ok, but this take just shows an extreme blidness to how things can be. Just visit the Netherlands, any medium to large city there, and you will be surprised about all the things people can and actually do on a bike. Also, cargo bikes are a thing. You can carry a lot in one. It's much cheaper to buy and maintain than any car you could imagine.
akgerber 3y ago
I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there's a pair of us — don't tell! They'd banish us, you know.
0_____0 3y ago
Is this sarcasm? There's a lot of precedent for people living lives mostly on bike, where I live in the Northeast US the car ownership rate is about 50% among my peer group. I own a car but find it easier to do most errands by bike. I suspect that there are other issues with your environment that prevent people from successfully using cycling as a normal transit mode, assuming you're from the US or Canada, it's likely that distances are too great, or that despite bike lanes, common trips require biking along highway speed traffic.

lvl102 3y ago

Bike lanes in the US are useless outside of perhaps 3-4 cities (all with exceptional public transportation systems) And they’re really green vanity projects that do not deliver value to urban areas. Utilization is piss poor especially during winter months. Edit: I am not against bike lanes but they’re really the cheapest way for city planners and politicians to pull a publicity stunt. A proper way to increase bike utilization is to invest in public transportation and actually drive down car ownership. But, this is a very expensive (and might even be impossible) feat in the US. WFH is not helping the trend because it’s facilitating people further out of cities which, you guessed it, increases car ownership.

looofooo0 3y ago
With this argument no modal change can ever Happen.
droopyEyelids 3y ago
If anyone else was wondering, the 4 biggest cities in the USA are New York City: ~8.4 million Los Angeles: ~3.9 million Chicago: ~2.7 million Houston: ~2.3 million And they account for ~ 5% of the total USA population (17.3 million / 331 million) * 100 = 5.23%
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  And these aren’t even the cities with great bike infrastructure. Sounds like we have a long way to go.
bwanab 3y ago
Bold statement with no evidence. I can assure you that they're well used in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville during the winter months as well as summer.
- lvl102 3y ago
  I ride bikes in Cambridge. This is not true at all. Bike lane utilization during winter months goes down quite a bit in Cambridge. In many parts, they don’t even build bike lanes with snow removal in mind. It’s not even safe/practical to bike in snow.

billy99k 3y ago

Most people going shopping need to bring multiple bags home. How about if you have small kids? What about areas of the country that have winter 6 months out of the year? It might increase business for a very small and narrow demographic, but I seriously doubt this will be the case overall.

NegativeLatency 3y ago
Check out the style of bike called a bakfiets (or any other cargo bike) it's a game changer. I have carried my wife and groceries a couple of times, and also picked up lumber and tools with it. Granted they're expensive (compared to most bikes), but it costs me about an ebike most of the time that my car goes into the shop, and my e-bakfiets has never needed any repairs that I was not able to do myself (even if you take it some place it's much cheaper).
- meragrin_ 3y ago
  > Check out the style of bike called a bakfiets (or any other cargo bike) it's a game changer. I have carried my wife and groceries a couple of times, and also picked up lumber and tools with it. Okay, I did. What is your definition of lumber? The bikes I saw would only be suitable for what I would consider "small sticks".
  - NegativeLatency 3y ago
    the lumber load was something like: - 6 2x4x12, strapped diagonally lengthwise on the top of the bin - big box of nails - air framing nailer - extension and air cords - pancake air compressor - other assorted stuff
    - meragrin_ 3y ago
      Have a link to the bin? All the bins I've seen don't look suitable for long lumber or are expensive enough where renting a truck is by far the cheaper route.
3y ago

mvdtnz 3y ago

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

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

abeppu 3y ago

I'm in favor of more bike lane infrastructure, but I think the evidence being cited here doesn't line up with the claims. The headline is "Bike lane are good for business" and immediately below it says "Study after study proves it" but: (regarding an SF study) > The results were mixed. > In the other district, sales tanked relative to the number of people a shop employed > “The takeaway is that it’s probably a minimal effect on businesses when you put in a bike lane,” (regarding another study) > Once again, the results were mixed. (regarding "the most definitive study"): > Like Poirier, Liu and Shi found that in many cases, only certain kinds of businesses benefited from the bike lanes and street improvements. The top-line the article is trying to draw is that there's some unambiguous evidence that it's "good for business", but really some businesses benefit, some don't, and some projects have little effect. The reports they're drawing on themselves seem biased or sloppy in how they handle evidence. One of the studies cited showed that businesses on the "road diet" being studied had a _lower_ percentage growth in revenue than the "Non-road diet" group (table 4), but the text of the report then decides that absolute sum of revenue growth is more important ... even the road-diet group was substantially larger both in terms of starting revenue and number of businesses. This kind of deceptive summarizing isn't going to help the bike-infrastructure cause, because the opponents to this kind of project can easily pick it apart. https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/yorkblvd_mccormick.pdf https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/yorkblvd_mccormick.pdf