Bike Paths: Transportation First, Recreation Perks

Most “Visit Our Town” brochures look like this:

Even though most of the town looks like this:

This is no coincidence. Every town’s leaders understand that people prefer living in and visiting the 1st photo, and yet they build 90% of their city in the image of the 2nd photo. There are many differences between such ideals; today we’ll focus on off-street bike paths.

Not only does a network of bike paths make for a more pleasant place to live, it provides alternative transportation. Providing alternatives to driving removes cars from the road, which comes with a long list of benefits, including for people who never use the bike paths:

• Less traffic
• Faster commute times
• Less parking needs
• Quieter neighborhoods
• Cleaner air
• Improved public health
• Fewer car accidents
• Lower road maintenance costs
• Lower taxes, due to less infrastructure costs
• More options and choice in transportation
• Mobility for people who can’t drive (1 in 3 Americans, including kids and seniors)
• Save money on gas, insurance, and car ownership, due to less traffic, lower demand, fewer accidents, and the option to live car-free

 

Survivorship Bias
During World War II, researchers from the Center for Naval Analyses noticed a pattern in the damaged areas of aircraft after they returned from missions. Their recommendation was to reinforce armor in the areas which showed the most damage.

However, a smart mathematician named Abraham Wald realized these were the areas of damage on aircraft which returned safely. Airplanes hit in the “safe” undamaged areas didn’t make it. His recommendation, which turned out to be correct, was to reinforce the areas least damaged.

In a similar example, the City of Allen, TX noted in their 2019 Master Plan that their bike paths were primarily used for recreation and fitness, by 49% and 46% (respectively of survey respondents, while only 14% of respondents used the bike paths for transportation. An easily-made mistake would be optimizing the bike paths for recreation, since that’s their primary use.

However, the correct conclusion is the bike paths need to be optimized for transportation, because currently, they’re already adequate for recreation, and people don’t use them for transportation because they can’t.

A bike network isn’t mere recreation; it’s transportation which is so good people will use it even when they don’t have to. This is rarely, if ever, the case for roads. People don’t set aside time in their day so they can simply drive around in traffic, for personal enjoyment. Nor has any motorist ever said, “It’s so nice to see so many people out on the road on a day like this!”

Imagine if anyone could go for a pleasant walk or an afternoon bike ride while also commuting to work, running an errand, picking up the kids, and so on. This would improve the public’s physical health, mental health, and would remove cars from the road (which comes with a laundry list of benefits, including for motorists), and it also saves time!

By getting exercise while taking care of chores, two things are done at once. Many people don’t exercise because they “don’t have time.” By creating a comprehensive, efficient bike network which gets people place-to-place in roughly the same amount of time as driving, people won’t need to set aside time each day for exercise.

 

Where to put them
Many bike paths are built along rivers and creeks, for good reason. In many cases, it’s impossible, or at least very difficult, to build neighborhoods right up to the edge of a body of water. There usually needs to be some buffer zone for flooding, and even when that isn’t the case, the soil is too soft and muddy to put heavy buildings on it. However, it’s perfect for a bike path: the presence of a river means it’s flat and in the shade.

Like creeks, underneath power lines and along other utility corridors is another easy location to place bike paths. By necessity, the land is typically a long, uninterrupted strip, and developments aren’t built in these locations. Why not make use of this land for transportation?

In some towns, bike paths along every creek and utility corridor could provide the majority of the city’s non-motor transportation needs. In order to facilitate connectivity, it’ll be necessary to supplement these corridors with on-street bike infrastructure and/or separated bike paths parallel to roadways. In some towns, where creeks are less plentiful, these roadway-adjacent options may need to provide the majority of bicycle infrastructure.

While city planners clearly understand that roadways need to connect residential and commercial development, it appears as if it’s not understood that bike paths should also take people where they need to go. When looking at maps of Plano’s bicycle network zoning side-by-side, it’s noticeable that the bike paths almost exclusively stay in yellow and green areas (residential and parks), while almost never connecting to red and blue (retail, business, and office), generally found near major roadway intersections.

There’s no safe, comfortable way to ride a bike to work, to the store, the post office, the bank, and so on. As a result, it’s no wonder hardly anyone does. If a bike network were built which provided accessibility to the places people need to go, more people would use it!

Too often, roads, neighborhoods, and parking lots are built before bike paths, until the land is filled in and there’s no room. As a result, you get bike “networks” made up of short, isolated paths which don’t touch, making it impossible to go from any given place to another.

A smart municipality would build out a transportation network, including bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, before development takes place. This is already the case for roadways. Afterward, the town can approve the construction of neighborhoods and commercial centers around them. Not only would this ensure the hike/bike paths actually get built, but their presence would increase the value of nearby developments from day one.

 

Mind the Gaps
Like any transportation network, the most important factor is connectivity. It doesn’t matter how many roads or paths there are, nor their quality, if none of them touch each other, or if they don’t take people from where they live to anywhere they need to go.

A cursory glance at bike paths in Plano, TX would make it seem as if the area is well-covered by bike paths:

However, the longer you look, the more you notice the frustrating amount of gaps in the network:

Compare that to roadways in any city. Every road connects to another road, and nearly all of them connect to several roads. It’s easy to get from any point in Collin County to any other point, but only when using a car. The same thing should be true by any means of transportation.

Connections are particularly absent across city borders. This has some sense behind it; both cities are forced to work together, agree on a budget and a timeline, hammer out the engineering details together, and so on. However, the same issues don’t have any noticeable effect on roadways. If it can be done with roads, it can be done with bike paths. Stop making plans and do it!

 

Budget Appropriately
A large problem facing non-motor transportation is it simply isn’t categorized as transportation. Building bike paths is typically the domain of the parks and recreation department, rather than transportation and infrastructure. As a result, non-motor transportation is forced to work with a limited budget, and project timelines are given low urgency.

Allen’s 2019 Master Plan displays an impressive-looking future bike network, when planned routes (dotted lines in the image below) are included. Six years later, less than a mile of planned bike paths have been built, zero connections have been made, and multiple paths have been closed for over a year. If the road network had been in the same situation, the connectivity problems would have been addressed and completed within a year.

One day, a friend of mine asked if “the bike trail in Allen was open again yet,” and without having to think about it, I responded, “Haha, of course not.” The fact that someone would have to clarify “Which one?” speaks to a severe problem in how bike infrastructure is treated, and the fact that I didn’t have to ask which one before answering “of course not,” further speaks to the depth of that problem.

It would be unacceptable for a city of over 100,000 people to be served by only 3-4 roadways more than a few miles in length, for almost no roads to touch each other, to have essentially no road connections to neighboring cities, and to leave the only throughways entirely closed for over a year at a time. The same importance must be applied to all modes of transportation.

In order to budget appropriately, a city should:

1. Estimate what % of trips is ideal for each mode of transportation. For example, a city might decide that in a perfect world, 50% of trips would be made by car, 25% by mass transit, 15% by bike, and 10% walking.

2. Allocate transportation funds by the same proportion. In this case, 50% of the budget would go toward building and maintaining roadways, 25% toward mass transit, 15% toward bike paths and lanes, and 10% toward sidewalks.

Nationwide, only about 2% of transportation budget is spent on bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, though this varies by state and municipality. The fact that 12% of all trips involve cycling or walking indicates there’s demand which isn’t being met, and/or non-motor infrastructure is more cost-efficient. Considering this is a sixfold discrepancy, probably both.