IN 2000 THERE were eight miles of bike lanes in Ann Arbor. City officials recently began touting the number of “lane miles” of bike lanes: 71.8 (a lane mile is a mile on one side of a two-land road). The mayor often tells media that Ann Arbor has “600 percent” more bike lanes than when he took office. Using percentages and lane miles can make it difficult for the public to get a handle on the actual number of miles added. In reality, our city has added an additional 10 miles of bike lanes since 2005 and this pales in comparison to other cities.
For example, the Mayor of Los Angeles recently announced his city would be adding 40 miles (not lane miles) of bike lanes per year. Fort Wayne, Indiana has more miles of in-road bike lanes than does Ann Arbor. More importantly, according to alternative transit experts, while Ann Arbor installs in-road bike lanes, such bike transit improvements have been, literally, left in the dust by urban planners as well as environmentalists across the country.
Cities increasingly are building protected lanes for bicyclists, finding that they bring economic as well as environmental benefits to communities.
Protected lanes are different from traditional bike lanes that separate cyclists from motorists with just a stripe of paint. The protected lanes add a barrier, such as a curb, parked cars or plastic posts, between moving cars and bicycle traffic to make cyclists feel safer. It costs about $445,000 per mile to install such bike lanes.
A big factor in their growing popularity: Recent studies show that the lanes can spur economic activity.
A study last year by the New York City Department of Transportation found that small businesses near protected bike lanes installed in 2007 saw sales grow much more sharply than the borough average. Another study by Portland State University found that people in Portland who drove to local businesses spent more money per visit than bicyclists, but cyclists visited the same businesses more often and spent more overall.
A study by the Frontier Group think tank last year found that annual miles traveled by car among 16- to 34-year-olds dropped 23 percent from 2001 to 2009. It also found that people in that age group took 24 percent more bike trips in the same period. A 2011 study by researchers at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute found that the percentage of young drivers with licenses is declining.
Young people comprise a group that economic forecaster Richard Florida has dubbed the “creative class.” They would rather spend their money on high-end smartphones, gadgets and bicycles.
That’s a demographic Ann Arbor’s elected officials are working hard to attract, and green lanes can help.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel unveiled his Chicago Streets for Cycling plan. The plan aims to have 650 miles of green and traditional bike lanes in the city by 2020. That would give the Windy City more green lanes than any other city in the country and would put a bike lane of some type within a half-mile of every Chicagoan.
Other cities — including Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Mo., Lincoln, Neb., and Wichita — are adding or planning to add green lanes, says Martha Roskowski, director of the Boulder, Colo.-based Green Lane Project.
Not everyone is convinced, however. In the February 2012 issue of Smart Planet, writer Jason Dearen asks the heretical question: “Are Bike Lanes Really Green?” Dearen writes, “The little science that has been done on this topic points to what most people have figured out from common sense: that increasing bicycle infrastructure in cities can reduce traffic and bolster public health….”
He then goes on to present the other side of the street, as it were. “Susan Handy, who teaches environmental policy and planning in the University of California, Davis’ Transportation Technology and Policy Program, said bike lanes could potentially cause more air pollution if they resulted in stop-and-go traffic. Handy added, ‘I do not know of a general study that tests this possibility, but many cities have modeled the effect of bicycle lanes before installing them and found little effect on traffic.’”
Here in Ann Arbor, it’s likely the oft-mentioned increase in miles of in-road bike lanes has had little overall impact on either public health or traffic. That’s because the number of people using Ann Arbor’s bike lanes has increased, but remains small overall.
In 2000 1,520 people in the city commuted to work by bike, according to U.S. Census data. After having spent over $5.2 million dollars on alternative transportation since 2003, in addition to the approximately $2-$2.5 million dollars spent on planning and installing the in-road bike lanes while resurfacing streets, fewer than 3,000 people, total, commute by bike in Ann Arbor.
In similarly-sized Boulder, Colorado 6,900 people commute to work on bike. Boulder sits atop the Top Ten list of cities in the U.S. in which residents bike to work. In Fort Collins, Colorado, which is slightly larger than Ann Arbor, there are 7,800 bike commuters, and triple the percentage of residents who commute by bike compared to our city. Like Boulder, Fort Collins has over 300 miles of bike lanes.
The facts are clear. Bike commuting is good for you, good for the economy and good for the environment. Cities which invest in biking infrastructure benefit big time. According to a piece in Smart Planet:
Portland has spent an estimated $57 million on its biking infrastructure so far, and the city has one of the country’s highest biking rates (a little more than 6 percent of the city’s residents commute by bike).
A study published in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health has found that during the next 30 years, Portland’s residents could save as much as $594 million in health care costs because of an investment in biking culture. Essentially, the money that is spent on biking infrastructure is money that is eventually saved on health care costs, the study says.
In the Boulder, Colorado Daily Camera, a January 2012 piece outlined the impact that city’s investment in its biking infrastructure has had on the local economy in that city of 90,000:
The businesses help support an industry that a new survey says accounts for an estimated $52 million in sales and 330 full-time jobs in Boulder.
The economic impact survey was released by Community Cycles, a local nonprofit that educates and advocates for the safe use of bicycles. The organization based its findings on surveys sent to 41 businesses in 2011.
Community Cycles found that bike-related retail, rental and repair shops supported 214 jobs and generated more than $24.4 million in revenue in 2010, while manufacturing supported 13 jobs and generated $10.4 million in sales. Education and advocacy organizations supported 48 jobs and generated $7.9 million in revenue, and miscellaneous groups supported 55 jobs and generated more than $9.5 million in revenue.
So why aren’t more people biking in Ann Arbor? Critics suggest it’s due to a lack of real political commitment to alternative transportation coupled with the current City Council’s addiction to parking revenues to balance the budget stretched thin by unfunded pension obligations and capital construction debt obligations that have tripled.
The National Bike League, a non-partisan advocacy group, collects bike commuter data on 277 of the largest cities in the U.S. Ann Arbor ranks near the bottom of the list at number 187 in terms of miles of bike lanes, and the percentage of residents who use them.
In 2012, the city of Ann Arbor budgeted $181,000 for alternative transportation, including the installation of “sharrows.” Sharrows are “politically easy,” according to a piece in Grist, and the magazine also reveals that many of Ann Arbor’s sharrows are incorrectly installed: “Federal regs now say that sharrows must be at least four feet from the curb if there’s no parking, 11 feet from the curb if there is.” Sharrows on downtowns Ann Arbor streets frequently put bikers right next to parked cars.
In the 2015 budget, the amount for alternative transportation is $281,963. So what are Ann Arbor taxpayers getting for their Act 51 alternative transportation money? More sharrows?
In 2009, the city allocated $885,957 to alternative transportation and in 2006 spent $723,844. In 2009, a large chunk of the money was given over to a study for the proposed Fuller Road Station. Between 2000 and 2013 Ann Arbor spent million of tax dollars on alternative transportation projects, in-road bike lanes, administration and staff. The amounts below show how much has been budgeted just for alternative transit and spent just since 2009:
2013 $448,265
2012 $181,000
2011 $616,173
2010 $796,766
2009 $885,957
In 2012, Boulder budgeted $528,264 on improving/extending bike paths in that city. Between 2005-2011, Boulder budgeted, on average, about one-half to two-thirds of what Ann Arbor did for bike path maintenance. However, Boulder has over 300 miles of in-road bike lanes versus the 71 “lane miles” in Ann Arbor. Boulder also has quadrupled the percentage of residents who commute to work by bike.
Ann Arbor’s Transportation Department web site includes this fact: “Auto travel within the City of Ann Arbor has been on the rise. According to the WATS travel demand model, Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) for the City of Ann Arbor increased by 9.8% from 2000 to 2010, from an estimated 481,607,203 miles to 529,238,685.”
After over a decade, Arbor’s biking infrastructure, as well as the total number of residents who use it, have increased at a pace that is well below national levels, according to an article about the proliferation of bicycle commuting in The Atlantic. Between 2000 and 2009, Anchorage, Alaska, Buffalo, New York, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and even Detroit saw triple, quadruple even quintuple the overall gains in the percentages of residents who commute by bike.
If Ann Arbor installed protected bike lanes would they increase the number of residents using those bike lanes? Experts say it’s absolutely possible:
1. Get with the research
A recent study of Seattle residents found that those living near bike paths had an increased likelihood of riding, but saw no effect for bike lanes. According to a recent study: “In sum, traffic-free paths connecting suburbs and cities ‘would appear to be insufficient in encouraging a shift from car travel to cycling for everyday practical journeys.’ The important lesson for policy makers is that bike paths and bike lanes may both increase ridership, but in different ways. While the former may encourage recreational riding, that doesn’t necessarily translate into everyday cycling.”
2. Get serious about supporting alternative transportation versus parking (and parking revenues)
Tim Jones of Oxford Brookes University conducted a study that concludes: “More specifically, provision of good quality separate cycling facilities alongside heavily travelled roads and linking to everyday facilities that people need to use, self-enforcing speed restrictions using traffic calming and more intelligent design across residential neighbourhoods, coupled with making driving expensive and inconvenient in central urban areas through various restrictions on car use and car parking. Encouraging the public on to the ‘nursery slopes’ of traffic-free paths in order to acquire the skills for cycling on the road network for everyday purposes seems unlikely to create a mass modal shift away from journeys by car.”
3. Get serious about setting aggressive goals and measuring results
In cities such as Seattle and Portland, city officials conduct bike commute counts. San Francisco, for example, has set a goal that 20 percent of the commute trips in that city be on bike by 2020.
4. Get real about maintaining current bike paths
With faded lines, potholes, debris, and use by homeowners for recycling and garbage containers on collection days, bike paths in Ann Arbor are improperly policed and need much better care.
5. Improve education
In the city’s most recent application for recognition by the League of American Bicyclists for recognition as a “Bicycle Friendly” community, officials describe the extent of the city’s bicyclist education program as a “brochure” available at City Hall and online.