Inside this story is a larger one. And right on time, as the Commercial Drive bike lane debate plods on, with no resolution in sight.
Kevin Griffin writes in Postmedia’s Vancouver Sun about new businesses springing up in response to the success of Vancouver’s existing bike lanes. This is all good.
First, in respect of existing businesses, Mr. Griffin updates those few who may have missed it on the bike-lane turnaround at the DVBIA, which represents 8,000 businesses of immense variety. He quotes Charles Gauthier:
Some businesses expressed a lot of concerns primarily that they thought their customers primarily arrived by parking and driving in front of their store,” he says.. . . But a 2011 Vancouver Separated Bike Lane Impact Study included surveys that talked to customers and businesses affected by the Dunsmuir and Hornby bike routes. It found a big difference between perception and reality: 20 per cent of customers arrived by car compared to 42 per cent by transit, 32 per cent on foot and about eight per cent by bike.
“What we have seen in the intervening years along Hornby Street is that things have settled down considerably,” says Gauthier. “We’re hearing less and less about it as a point of concern.
Mr. Griffin goes on to highlight several new businesses that are bike-lane-related. But there is something else hidden in the stories, which is the City’s reputation, and the reaction of visitors to Vancouver, amid these new opportunities:
Says Cycle City Tours’ Josh Bloomfield, who offers guided city tours by bike, and is ranked spectacularly high on TripAdvisor:
We get a lot of families, parents going out with kids, and people who have heard that Vancouver is bike friendly,” he says.
“If we didn’t have this reputation and the infrastructure that you can obviously see, you wouldn’t do that. . . .
“. . . We see the smile on people’s faces when they come back,” he says. “They’ve experienced the city in a new way. They tell us ‘I wish our city could be like this.’
Says ModaCity’s Chris Bruntlett, about the move into bike-related filmmaking:
We’re telling Vancouver’s story and what’s coming out of this huge shift that’s got 10 per cent of trips to work on bicycle,” he says. “The eyes of North America are really on our city in terms of promoting and enabling cycling.
Here’s Bomber Brewing’s Blair Calibaba on their business success, located at the intersection of the Adanac and Mosaic bikeways. Don’t forget that Cycle City offers a “Craft Beer Tour”, encouraging travel (by bike) to parts of town off the typical Stanley Park – Gastown circuit:
Part of the draw for us was the location and being on such a busy avenue for cycling,” he says. “We knew we would get traffic and consistent customers. The city’s bike culture is growing incredibly in this city, thanks to the infrastructure and more cycling routes.
My take is that the bike lanes we have work fine for existing businesses, and are spawning new locally-focused and visitor-focused ones. Such opportunities will multiply as Vancouver’s AAA-network (*) spreads, and more and more destinations can be reached by people of all ages and abilities (AAA) on bikes.
I hope to see, some day in the future, more locals and tourists setting out (as they do now for other areas) for the Drive, — which is a wonderful area to explore and spend some bucks. And they will increasingly want to do it by bike. And it is the AAA bike lanes, and the network of them, which will get more people travelling to the Drive.
(*) All Ages and Abilities bike network defined.
This shows that maybe there needs to be another thing added to the equation. Something like education about the benefits to business of complete streets. It’s obvious to anyone who’s studied it or has experienced it but it’s still new and unknown to some. They need to be helped through this and learn that this benefits them and their bottom-line.
The way people who visit say “I wish our city could be like this” no doubt threatens the auto industry. If every city in the continent had transportation choices this would mean fewer cars would get sold. The auto industry knows that many of their sales are for no reason other than lack of choice.
We are working with Streets For Everyone to engage businesses along Main, Kingsway and Commercial. If you are interested in helping to engage these businesses, please sign up at: http://www.bccc.bc.ca/volunteer_streets_for_everyone
I feel for Cycle City who will likely take a big revenue hit from Mobi. They’ll still have the tours at least.
Oops not sure how I typed Mobi in poster name!
I think it only takes a bit of cursory math to see that the rental companies offering bicycles won’t be that impacted per the ‘a huge hit’ comment. I was riding the Seawall yesterday and it was pretty clear that a huge number of the cyclists using that route were tourists on rental bikes. They’re easy to spot — esp. when riding against the flow on the pedestrian only part of the path :-(. A bit more education by the private renters on that point would go a long way to reducing conflict on the Seawall IMO. But I digress.
The reality is that you can’t ‘do’ the Seawall within the half-hour time alloted for the free portion of a Mobi rental — and that locale is Ground Zero for tourists and bike rentals in Vancouver. Further, the bike rental companies offer tandems, child bike trailers, and other things you can’t get from Mobi. Cycle City is forward thinking in offering actual tours rather than just rentals and I suspect their business succeeds in a big part because of that.
Now, contrast how many bikes are available for rental now, with how many bike share bikes are likely to be available to tourists at any one time — esp. as bike share is a service primarily targeted to locals needing a short trip from A to B — and research the fact that there are still lots of private bike rental opportunities in cities with existing bike shares (Paris and Lyon are two early adopters I googled that still have functioning private rental companies in place) and the future looks far less dire. But without knowledge of the private companies’ costs, profits, etc everything is speculation.
“Startup costs for tools and a fleet of bicycles are relatively high. I think it cost $175,000 to open the place I work at and we managed to pay that off over the course of 3 years so now whatever we take in comes directly back to us.”
http://www.icebike.org/bike-rental-shop/
Was just in Montreal, bixi is a great system! And I was surprised by the number of separated bike lanes and the number of cyclists. I still think this inane helmet law will be the death of bike share here, but as for separated bike lanes, get on with it and get out of just the downtown core! How great would bike lanes be on commercial, main, w.4th, etc.