Business-friendly bike lanes

Bike lanes can be good for business, reports the Clean Air Partnership in their report, Bike Lanes, On-street Parking and Business (pdf). The study was conducted partly (mostly?) by the former TCAT project lead, Fred Sztabinski (as far as I know). The study focused on the Bloor Annex area, interviewing merchants and patrons in the area. The surprising result is that few patrons arrive by car and businesses will suffer little and may gain much if on-street parking is removed for bike lanes. As you can see by the photo I chose from last year's Bells on Bloor ride, this is good fodder for making Bloor into a Tooker freeway for cyclists.

Contrary to common public perception, the evidence shows that removing on-street parking to install a bicycle lane or widened sidewalk would likely increase not decrease commercial activity. "This report should alleviate concerns that downtown business owners have about on-street bicycle lanes", said Eva Ligeti, Executive Director of the Clean Air Partnership.

The study – conducted in July of 2008 – surveyed the opinions and preferences of merchants and patrons on Bloor Street and analyzed parking usage data in the Annex area. Among the study’s findings:

* Only 10% of patrons drive to the Bloor Annex neighbourhood;
* Even during peak periods no more than about 80% of parking spaces are paid for;
* Patrons arriving by foot and bicycle visit the most often and spend the most money per month;
* There are more merchants who believe that a bike lane or widened sidewalk would increase business than merchants who think those changes would reduce business;
* Patrons would prefer a bike lane to widened sidewalks at a ratio of almost four to one; and
* The reduction in on-street parking supply from a bike lane or widened sidewalk could be accommodated in the area’s off-street municipal parking lots.

Background: To encourage more Canadians to use bicycles for utilitarian trips more often, it is essential that the implementation of bike lanes on major streets be accelerated. The Bloor-Danforth corridor is a particularly attractive option for a city-wide east-west bike lane in Toronto because it is one of the only long, straight, relatively flat routes that connects the city from end to end; there are no streetcar tracks; and has one of the highest car-bike collision rates in the city. However, the installation of bike lanes in this corridor has historically been thought to be too politically difficult to achieve.

Everybody say, Amen.