[yftsui]

Does more bike lanes result in more bikes? The bike lane city added near my home is barely used, while local businesses are suffering as the bike lane took away street parking, ppl need to drive more to find parking then walk back or just skip those merchants

[bryanlarsen]

The bike lanes in Toronto are very well studied due to obstructionists like Doug Ford asking for more studies continuously. The bike lanes in Toronto significantly increased store sales along the streets where they were installed.

[acdha]

They do, when built properly - if the city just builds a few random patches which don’t connect anywhere useful it works about as well as it would if the roads were a random mess of gravel, highway, and “coming soon” signs.

Two other notes: people don’t survey bike traffic and often underestimate it because bicyclists are quiet and take up far less space. Similarly, small business owners famously underestimate how many customers walk, use transit, or bike because if they personally drive they assume everyone else does, too, and it’s a tempting target for blaming every problem on because it means they don’t have to change any of their decisions. This has played out multiple times where I live where it’s the bike lane conspiracy scaring away their customers, never Walmart or the pandemic, even if other businesses blocks away from the bike lanes had the same problem.

None of that says your city can’t have done something stupid, of course, but I’d look for harder data rather than trusting anything “everyone knows”.

[yftsui]

I love the fact that bike lane supporters are always winning in these arguments: if bike lane works we should get more; if bike lane doesn't work it means it is not enough thus we should get even more.