515,980 trips were recorded along Victoria’s Pandora and Fort Street protected bike lanes between 2018-2019 in a report by CTV Vancouver Island News, May 2019, disproving the pesky theory protected bike is killing businesses. The removal of parking spaces to make way for the bike lanes is the number one reason why businesses are losing business. This argument is not only misguided but also lacks facts. Not only do protected bike lanes encourage people to cycle or walk they also shop and spend more on a month than those who drive their cars.
According to a 2019 article by The Journal of American Planners: Measuring the Local Economic Impacts of Replacing On-Street Parking with Bike Lanes the decrease in street parking not only disproved the argument that bike lanes would have a negative economic impact on the economy on retailers along
Toronto, Canada’s Bloor Street. It showed that the protected bike lane increased business revenue with an increase
in pedestrian traffic. According to the Victoria Transport Policy, Todd Litman states improving the benefits of non-motorized transportation like cycling and walking increased revenues for local businesses. Although those who drove spend more on average on one trip; it is those who travel by non-motorized transportation who spend more overall in a month on the local economy.
In his book, The High Cost of Free Parking, Donald Shoup argues,”30 percent of the cars in congested traffic were cruising for parking like hawks looking for prey.” If this is the case, then time wasted is spent on parking and less on actual spending refuting the notion that increased parking improves business.
Finally, to emphasize the impact cycling has on the economy one just must look at how Dobosala Cantina and Ride-thru embraced the protected bike lane by including a take-out window for cyclists on Pandora Street corridor. Not only is this business still thriving today in 2019 it was awarded “Best World Food” by Yam Magazine.
Expand away and keep those protected bike-lanes coming.
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