Bike lanes are obviously good for cyclists, as they make it safer to ride and encourage people to make more trips on two wheels. More people riding instead of driving is also better for the environment and cuts down on noise pollution from cars. Still, since bike lanes often replace street parking, it’s understandable that business owners would be wary that the city putting in bike lanes will drive customers away. As Business Insider reports, though, the research actually shows that those fears are unfounded.
Take, for example, a study from 2012 that looked at two shopping districts in Seattle that got new bike lanes. One replaced three parking spots, while the other replaced 12. Sales tax data showed that spending at the former generally tracked with other areas that didn’t have bike lanes, while the latter saw sales quadruple. It’s probably going too far to say the bike lanes in the second district caused the increase in sales, but clearly, adding bike lanes and removing parking spaces didn’t hurt sales.
That’s not the only study that came to the same conclusion. A study in New York City the next year found that business also increased in pedestrianized areas relative to the rest of each borough. Manhattan saw sales increase by nine percentage points in one bike-friendly neighborhood, while one in the Bronx was up 32 percentage points. In Brooklyn, the jump in sales was even more drastic, climbing by 84 percentage points.
Now, not every study that Business Insider reviewed showed a huge increase in sales in every single bike-friendly district. Additionally, some types of businesses did better than others. Cyclists probably aren’t dropping in on a furniture store to pick up a new couch or frequenting gas stations, after all. Generally speaking, though, study after study found that after neighborhoods added bike lanes, business stayed about the same, with some businesses benefiting a lot more than others.
As Insider points out, there’s also no reason local governments can’t set some money aside to compensate individual businesses if they see sales drop after bike lanes are installed. Even if that doesn’t get every single business on board the bike lane train, the research shows that cities should just go ahead and build the bike lanes anyway. As one researcher concluded, “[O]nce a street is changed, generally speaking, after six months or a year, nobody remembers what it used to look like. It’s the new normal.”