Cycling America’s Cities
How investments in infrastructure and education are making these metro areas perfect for traveling on two wheels
This article also appears in the Oct 2017 issue of Hyperlink, a new magazine focused on the intersection of media, technology, commerce, and culture. Hyperlink is published by Winning Edits. To purchase the Oct 2017 issue, go to hyperlinkmag.com.
By Karen Beattie
When Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, was first elected to office in 2011, he promised to turn Chicago into the most bike-friendly city in the United States. Five years later, that’s exactly what he has done, according to Bicycling magazine, which designated Chicago as the best bike city in the US in 2016, bumping New York City from the top spot.
Since Emanuel has been in office, Chicago has added 148 miles of bike lanes, 108 of which are protected by barriers or buffers. Added to the already existing bike lanes, Chicago now has around 225 miles of on-street bike lanes, and forty-seven miles of off-street trails, including the eighteen-mile lakefront trail, and the new 606 trail that goes through the popular hipster Logan Square neighborhood. In addition, Chicago added the Divvy bike-sharing program in 2011, which now has more than 580 bike stations throughout the city, and 5,800 bikes.
“When Mayor Emanuel came into office, in his transitional report there were many objectives and strategies to make our city more bike-friendly,” says Mike Amsden, Assistant Director of Transportation Planning at the Chicago Department of Transportation. “It included everything from installing protected bike lanes, which we had never done before, to building the Bloomingdale Trail [the other name for the 606, which is the longest elevated rail-to-trail conversion in the country], to launching a bike-share program. So there was a lot of strong political support from the top.”
Chicago’s not the only city beefing up its biking infrastructure. Other US cities like San Francisco, Portland, Minneapolis, Austin, New York City, and Boulder are adding bike lanes and bike-sharing programs. New York City residents take 450,000 bike trips a day, compared with 170,000 in 2005, according to the New York Times. Los Angeles has 796 miles of bike lanes, up from 545 miles five years ago. And Portland has added 370 miles of bike routes, including “neighborhood greenways” that lower the speed limit to 20 miles per hour on local streets to protect bicyclists.
The League of American Bicyclists has five criteria for determining what makes a city bikeable. These include: engineering of bike infrastructure, education of riders, encouragement of riders, enforcement of traffic laws, and evaluation and planning for bicycling. What’s driving this trend? In some ways it’s a no-brainer: biking is good for us and the environment. In bike-friendly cities, more biking can reduce congestion and emissions from cars, and give viable transportation options to lower-income residents. It also reduces noise pollution, cuts down a city’s carbon footprint, and can reduce greenhouse emissions.
For Chicago, there were many reasons for creating a more bikeable city, says Amsden. “It’s not just about trying to make it fun for people to ride a bike,” he says. “What we’re seeing is employers and employees who want to locate in cities where they have options for getting around, including walking, biking, and public transportation. And health is a huge component. We as a nation, and Chicago, have several health and obesity health issues. So providing healthy and active transportation options is a means to addressing some of those health discrepancies. And we also just wanted to create safer streets for everybody. What cities around the country have found is that when you provide better bike infrastructure, better street design, crashes go down for all uses of the roadway.”
Economics can also play a part in cities that become more bikeable. Elly Blue, a Portland-based activist, writes in her book Bikenomics: How Cycling Can Save the Economy that cycling can help the economy broadly and locally. Biking makes people healthier, which saves on healthcare costs. In Copenhagen, the best biking city in the world, the cycling population contributes $261 million a year in public health savings. Adding biking infrastructure can also create jobs, and fewer parking garages means more revenue from other structures like hotels and stores.
Millennials may also be driving the growth in bicycling, as they are a generation that seems to be delaying car ownership, according to the Los Angeles Times. They prefer to catch an Uber, bike, or take public transportation.
While more and more cities are becoming bike-friendly, it’s not without its challenges. The expense of creating protected bike lanes can be a huge hurdle for cities. It costs an average of $150,000 per mile to create protected bike lanes, according to the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center.
And then there’s the safety issue. In Chicago, accidents involving bikers have jumped 28 percent since 2005, according to WYCC, a public broadcasting station in Chicago. So far in 2017, eleven Chicago cyclists have died in biking accidents. Drive around Chicago and you’ll see bikes painted white, adorned with bouquets of flowers and laminated pictures of the cyclist who died at that location. It’s a somber reminder that cycling in the city is not without risks.
There’s also the backlash (or what some call “bikelash”) from car drivers. Biking lanes mean there’s less room for cars, and more frustration and congestion for those who commute on four wheels. Drivers complain of bikers not obeying traffic signals and blowing through intersections like they own the road. Bikers worry about car drivers who don’t pay attention — leading to bikers being “doored,” cut off, or hit. Swedish filmmaker Fredrik Gertten recently created a documentary about the conflicts between drivers and bicyclists, Bikes vs. Cars, that investigates the drama behind the struggle to make the world more bikeable, and the activists fighting against the forces they believe are keeping the world car-dependent.
To counteract the safety issues, cities are making a concerted effort to make biking safer and ease the tensions between drivers and bikers. Chicago has recently added bike lane traffic signals, to the relief of drivers and pedestrians who have long complained that bikers disregard traffic signals. “What we’ve found [is] that when we put in good infrastructure, like protected bike lanes and bike traffic signals, compliance of traffic laws goes way up,” says Amsden. “We’ve done data collection on bike traffic signals. Before we put them in, about 30 percent of people on bikes stopped and waited for the red light to turn green. So that means 70 percent of people just blatantly disregarded the signal, or got to the intersection and crossed through the red light when they felt it was safe to do so. After we put in the [bike traffic] signals, over 90 percent of bikers are now complying with the traffic signal.”
Last year, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) launched a contest to source ideas on how to better protect cyclists from cars, and polled experts on the topic for an article in Outside magazine. The ideas that emerged included having separate, colored biking lanes similar to those found in Copenhagen, adding traffic signals for bicyclists, and providing mandatory bike safety education for children.
Cities with robust biking infrastructure can also be attractive locations for tourists. While no data exists as to whether a more bike-friendly Chicago has attracted more visitors, Amsden thinks it’s had an impact. “I’d say it helps,” he says. “With the Bloomingdale Trail (606), Lakefront trail, and Divvy bikes, tourists have many more opportunities to hop on a bike.” Bike-sharing programs (see the end of the article) make it easy for tourists to pedal from one attraction to another for cheap. Most programs offer rentals for thirty minutes or all day long. The biggest programs are in New York (Citi Bike), Chicago (Divvy), and Washington, DC (Capital Bikeshare).
If you’re wondering what bikeable US cities to visit, check out Bicycling magazine’s list of the top 50 bike cities. The list includes information about whether or not the cities have bike-sharing, and offers local advice about the best places to bike or get a tune-up. Bikeabout.com also offers tips on taking a biking vacation. For each destination they offer bike maps, tour guides, information about bike-sharing program, places to see, safety and security tips, as well as information about hotels and Airbnbs that are bike-friendly.
What’s next for cities like Chicago and others around the country? By 2020, Chicago plans to have a continuous 645 miles of on-street bike lanes throughout the city. The city’s goal is to make bicycling safe and comfortable for all bikers, create more bike lanes and paths where the population is denser, and increase infrastructure where ridership is high.
“Our goal was to become the best bike city in the United States, and we did that,” says Amsden. “We were voted the best by Bicycling magazine. Does that mean that we stop doing what we’re doing? Absolutely not. I know other cities are trying to do the same amount of work, if not more. So we need to continue to try to improve and make the city more bikeable, but also safe and more enjoyable to get around.”
Innovations like solar-powered bike paths, protected intersections with dedicated traffic lights for cyclists (similar to pedestrian crosswalks), elevated bike highways, elevated roundabouts, better bike parking, and bike lifts for very steep hills may be coming to a city near you. And cities are trying to find ways to encourage more women, the elderly, and children to ride — and to feel safe doing so.
Whatever the future of biking looks like, it’s certain that cities will only be-come more and more bike-centric. So put on your lycra shorts and helmet and start pedaling.
How to Capitalize on the Bike-Sharing Boom
Bike-sharing was introduced to the US in 2010, and since then riders have taken eighty-eight million trips on rented bikes, according to the National Association of Transportation Officials. The US now has 199 bike-sharing programs and a total of 4,789 bike stations. In the twenty largest cities, only Detroit and St. Louis still lack bike-sharing programs. Chicago, New York City, and Washington, DC, have the biggest programs by far. Bike-sharing programs provide short-term bike rentals through automated bike docking stations throughout a city.
Users can buy yearly memberships, which is convenient for commuters who ride a train to work but need a bike to travel from the train station to the office. Or users can check out a bike with a credit card or mobile phone at the docking station, and then return the bike to that station or any other station throughout the city once they are finished with their ride. For instance, Nice Ride, which is the bike-sharing program in Minneapolis/St. Paul, offers 200 kiosks where you can rent a bike for $3 per 30 minutes. You can also purchase a 24-hour pass for $6, which gives you unlimited 30-minute rides, a 30-day pass for $18, or a yearly pass for $75.
Quick Reference: The 11 Largest Bike-Sharing Programs in the US
New York: Citi Bike (645 stations)
Chicago: Divvy (581 stations)
Washington, DC: Capital Bikeshare (437 stations)
Minneapolis: Nice Ride Minnesota (197 stations)
Boston: Hubway (184 stations)
Miami: DecoBike (147 stations)
Topeka: Metro Bikes (138 stations)
Philadelphia: Indego (105 stations)
Portland: BIKETOWN (100 stations)
San Diego: DecoBike (95 stations)
San Francisco: Ford GoBike (70 stations)
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