The health and environmental benefits of biking are known to many, but one of its lesser publicized virtues is the economic impact it can have on cities that embrace the two-wheeled philosophy.
Author and Portland-based biking advocate Elly Blue made just such a case during a stop Sunday in Savannah for an event hosted at the Sentient Bean by local nonprofit group Savannah Bicycle Campaign..
Currently, the U.S. spends roughly $150 billion to build, operate and maintain its highways, according to the Congressional Budget Office, with more than three-quarters of this funding provided by state and local governments. Blue said the money spent on roads has often maximized congestion rather than alleviated it, and many states struggle to keep roads maintained once they are built.
Congress has been debating for years whether to spend more on the nation’s aging roads, highways and bridges, as the number of people driving less or foregoing cars altogether is on the rise, particularly in more densely populated city centers. The U.S. Census Bureau released a report this year that showed the number of people who commuted by bike, nationwide, had increased 60 percent over the last decade, from 488,000 in 2000 to 786,000 by 2012.
Blue noted that the Federal Highway Trust Fund — set up to provide money for construction and maintenance of the country’s interstates — has faced insolvency for years as Congress has failed to adjust the gas tax for inflation for two decades.
“It’s been underwater for years; we’ve been putting billions of dollars from the general fund every few years to keep it going,” said Blue.
In her book, “Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save the Economy,” Blue argues that biking policies provide a low-cost alternative for cities looking to boost infrastructure and alleviate road congestion. The author has spent the last month touring the U.S. with a cohort of advocates to tout biking as an economic solution for cash-strapped cities.
During her research, Blue said, she was asked how much it would cost to make every city in the United States as bike friendly as her hometown of Portland, Ore., widely considered one of the best biking cities in the U.S. and in the world.
“We spent 1 percent of our transportation budget every year for 20 or 30 years (on biking infrastructure) … and what it all amounted to in dollars was $100 per person,” said Blue.
She said she checked that figure with Minneapolis, Minn., which remade itself as bike friendly in a much shorter period of time using a federal grant and said it came out to about the same per resident.
“That’s about two tanks of gas for a world class bike-friendly city,” said Blue.
Savannah has slowly come to embrace cycling with the recent addition of Chatham Area Transit’s pilot bike program. CAT received a federal grant last week that will allow it to expand from two stations to seven.
John Bennett, executive director of Savannah Bicycle Campaign, said he believes the city is starting to see biking in more economically favorable terms.
“I think there’s recognition that there’s tremendous potential both for developing tourism in a very a low-impact way — that doesn’t place strain on our existing infrastructure or compete for parking spaces — but also recognition that facilities like bike trails and routes increase property value,” said Bennett.
Bennett said his own organization partners with the Metropolitan Planning Commission once a year to do an annual bike census as a way to track Savannah’s evolving bicycle ridership.
“We stand on designated street corners once a year and count bikes, so we can see year-over-year changes and patterns,” said Bennett. “The other thing we’ve done in the past is analyze incident reports from bicycle crashes, so we can see location and causes.”
As for the city’s recent proposal to ban bicycling through Forsyth Park, Bennett says this shows that more people are using bikes.
“Pedestrians and bicyclists are very much on the same team and I think there are solutions to accommodate them both,” he said.
Blue estimated it would cost roughly $32 billion to make the entire United States a bike-friendly place.
“It’s a lot of money, but compared to the money we spend (on roads) and compared to the benefits we could reap by having that opportunity available to everybody, it’s actually not that much,” she said.