For years, we’ve written about the trickle of good research that is starting to prove that protected bike lanes and better sidewalks do a lot to spur sales at street-front businesses.
This still seems to be counterintuitive to a slew of business owners, but they probably should take heed or start preparing for second careers.
Here’s a nice related tidbit from a new Strong Towns article:
Picture the busiest, most successful shopping districts in America. Think Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago or Pike Place Market in Seattle. Are these areas filled with parking lots and parking spaces? No. They’re filled with people walking around from store to store.
Akron, Ohio is, of course, a very different place from Chicago or Seattle, but that doesn’t mean the same basic concepts won’t apply. When you make an area appealing for people on foot or on a bike — when you slow down the pace of life in that neighborhood just a little — suddenly visitors are lingering longer and stopping in more stores. Suddenly residents are walking or biking over on a regular basis to see what’s new.
The article goes on to compile a lot of the best research that should be helpful to businesses and neighborhoods all over:
In New York City, the addition of a protected bike lane on two major streets led to “a 50 percent increase in sales receipts.”
In San Francisco, after a bike lane was added on Valencia Street “two-thirds of the merchants said bike lanes had been good for business.”
In Seattle, the creation of a new bike lane, which eliminated 12 on-street parking spaces resulted in a serious increase in retail sales along the street.
When a new protected bike lane was installed on Broadway in Salt Lake City, sales on the street rose 8.8%, in spite of the fact that the bike lanes decreased on-street parking by 30%. Surveys of business owners along the street showed that a majority of them felt that the change was positive, and most of the remaining business owners felt neutral about it.
In 2013, the city of Vancouver installed protected bike lanes on a key street, which involved removing 20 parking spaces. For business owners along this corridor, their initial fears about losing sales did indeed come true. But that was only a short-term result. Soon after the bike lanes were installed, one local restaurant owner happily reported that business was better than ever and stated, “We definitely have benefited from the increased usage of the bike lane.” With a slew of bike riders now streaming by, he was able to reach a range of new customers.
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