| Title | The Pandemic Bike Boom Survives—in Cities That Stepped Up | |
| Date | Tuesday November 15 2022, @07:30PM | |
| Author | hubie | |
| Topic | ||
| from the dept. | ||
In 18 years working in bicycles, Eric Bjorling had never seen anything like April 2020. With no end to the pandemic in sight, people were desperate for things to do. "They had time on their hands, they had kids, they needed to physically go outside and do something," says Bjorling, head of brand marketing at Trek Bicycles, one of the largest bike manufacturers in the world.
So began the pandemic bicycle boom. US bike sales more than doubled in 2020 compared to the year before, according to research firm NPD Group, reaching $5.4 billion. Bike mechanics got overloaded as people dragged neglected bikes out of garages and basements. And local governments responded to and then fueled the shift, by adapting urban environments with unprecedented speed, restricting car traffic on some streets and building temporary bike lanes on others. "During the pandemic, many things were possible, policy-wise, that before we didn't think possible, especially at that pace," says Ralph Buehler, a professor of urban affairs and planning at Virginia Tech.
Almost three years later, the legacy of the bike boom, and the accompanying changes to urban infrastructure, is murky. In many places, it has been hard to lastingly convert residents to cycling, especially for the sort of trips that might otherwise be taken by car: to work, to school, or to the grocery store. Bike sales have slowed from their frantic pandemic-era high: NPD Group data shows the value of sales dropped 11 percent this year compared to 2021, though they're still well above 2019 levels.
[...] Tab Combs, a transportation policy researcher at the University of North Carolina who has tracked Covid-era infrastructure projects around the world, sees evidence that cities have changed the way they think about building stuff altogether. They've found new ways to engage the public; they believe they can put up temporary infrastructure and change it later. "These [transportation] interventions, most of them actually were ephemeral," she says. "But what we're learning is that the experience of doing it is going to have a long-lasting impact."
That's how it worked in Tucson, Arizona, says Andy Bemis, a senior project manager with the city's Department of Transportation and Mobility. [...]
Not all of Tucson's projects became permanent, Bemis says. But the department has emerged with a better understanding of how to engage the community. [...] "For many years, we've been the Department of No," says Bemis. "And though right now we certainly can't fix every problem, we can start." Now that the biggest boom has passed, cities will have to figure out how to keep rolling.
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printed from SoylentNews, The Pandemic Bike Boom Survives—in Cities That Stepped Up on 2024-04-16 05:19:55