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1The battle over bike lanes needs a mindset shift A) Five years ago, the city of Queens, New York, announced that it
2would be putting bike lanes onto a stretch of Skillman Ave- and removing 116 parking spots. Cyclists loved the plan, but
3local business owners got very angry. Taking out those parking spots, as they argued at protests and in letters to the
4city council, would ruin stores and restaurants along Skillman. “Parking here is already a nightmare，” one shouted at a
5protest rally. B) But the bike lanes were a done deal, and soon they were in place. Early this year, Jesse Coburn--an
6investigative writer with Streetsblog New York—— wondered whether those predictions of economic collapse came true. So
7he asked the city's Department of Finance to give him a few years' worth of sales figures for that stretch of Skillman
8Ave. How had the businesses on that street fared? C) Quite well, it turns out. In the year after the bike lanes arrived,
9businesses on Skillman saw sales rise by 12 percent, compared to 3 percent for Queens in general. W hafs more, that
10section of road saw new businesses open, while Queens overall had a net loss. D) The thing is, the actual merchants
11along Skillman? They didn't believe it. When Cobum spoke to them and described what he'd found, only a few store owners
12admitted the lanes had helped. Many still insisted the lanes were killing their part of the city. And emotions ran hot:
13Someone scattered tacks (大头钉) on the bike lane. E) This little story turns out to be a fascinating glimpse at the
14challenges cities face as they try to update their urban infrastructure-to clean up the air, reduce greenhouse
15emissions, and speed up travel by making towns more bike-friendly. There's a rising amount of data showing that
16installing bike lanes and making streets more pedestrian-friendly boosts the economic fortunes of a place. Removing cars
17and parking spots works. But the folks who run local businesses simply aren't convinced, even when their own street
18performs. Given that sort of mess, can political fights over bike lanes ever end? F) In 2013, researchers at New York
19City's Department of Transportation studied seven stretches of road that had installed bike lanes or created
20pedestrian-friendly areas. The city analyzed the data for businesses along those routes and found that by the third
21year, sales grew faster on five of the streets than in the district overall, on average- up to five times faster, in
22fact. G) Beyond New York, a survey o f research from 23 cities found that bike lanes and pedestrian-friendly design
23didn't hurt local retail and food stores. ("Fears of disastrous consequences for local businesses are unfounded," the
24researchers concluded.) More recent work has shown roughly the same. H) The truth is that in fairly dense areas, bikes
25are more efficient at moving people around. You might lose one car driver's business- but you gain shoppers who now can
26arrive more easily on bikes. "Cyclists and pedestrians are consumers too,“ notes Professor Susan Handy. Plus, streets
27redesigned for bikes and pedestrians tend to become more pleasant places to hang around, so “in a lot of cases, that's
28created much nicer environments that are really good for those businesses.” I) Mom-and-pop shops are usually pretty
29quick at recognizing situations that will help their bottom lines. So why the blind spot here? Perhaps ifs that
30attention focuses on horror stories—— and some merchants do get hit when bike lanes come in. J) I spoke to Cindy Hughes,
31a hairdresser (理发师)in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She said business fell by at least 40 percent when the city removed
32nearby parking to put in a bike lane. The majority of her customers drive, with many coming from nearby towns. Only a
33very few have shifted to cycling, and even those almost certainly won't cycle in Boston's snowy winters. So while Hughes
34supports bike lanes一"cyclists deserve to be safe”— she sees the parking loss as an existential risk. “Look, 90 percent
35of my customers drive,“ she told me. ”For our business, the bike lanes are way worse than Covid was.” K) For others, the
36pushback is cultural, says Henry Grabar, a writer for the Slate Magazine. Small business owners are frequently drivers
37who commute from other parts of the city by car, Grabar points out. They're also often longtime locals. "They tend to be
38people with deep roots in the city, who have hung around since before the neighborhood became what it is today,“ he
39adds. Driving around town in a car is so normal to them that cycling seems weird and unusual- despite its boost from
40Covid, when bike sales exploded by 75 percent. L) Psychology beats all! Who knew, right? The fierce divide between store
41owners and bike-lane advocates seems similar to our larger culture wars over climate change. If we've learned anything
42about culture wars, ifs that data isn't much good at changing minds. M) When Janette Sadik-Khan was the head o f New
43York City's Transportation Department back in the early 2000s, she oversaw a rollout (推出) of bike lanes—and got angry
44blowback from residents and business owners who claimed there weren't enough cyclists to justify installing lanes. Now,
45she notes ironically, the lanes are so foil of activity that opponents have turned to claiming the problem is the
46opposite: There are too many cyclists getting in the way of cars. N) Maybe bike lanes will always be charged with
47emotion, until enough of the public is finally concerned about climate change- and it seems reckless (鲁莽的)to not have
48them. O) Crises, after all, have a way of opening people's eyes to possibilities. During Covid, restaurants and cafes
49lost so much business that cities nationwide began allowing them to build curbside seating areas where people could sit,
50safely, in the open air. It greatly reduced parking- but because, well, shop owners didn't see any way around it.
51Customers loved the outdoor seating so much that cities are making it permanent: A New York City study of several
52streets closed during Covid found storeowners making more than before, and diners enjoying the outdoor lifestyle. If
53data won't change minds, customers might.
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