CT Green Scene

If Traffic Is The Problem, Is Bike-Sharing The Answer?

by Eileen Weber

Could a bike-sharing program be in the works for the Hartford area? If you’re John Zito from The Green Vibration, then the answer may be yes. Zito and his wife, among other green business ventures, are hoping to start a bike-sharing program in the city’s center. There’s one teeny-weeny problem: there aren’t enough bike racks.

“This has been a little more of an investment than we thought,” said Zito of the program. With only a handful of bikes all in varying levels of repair, “We’re on a shoe-string budget.”

While Zito has an idea and a dream, there are few other details that need to be worked out before his program gets up and running. For one, he will need the full support of the City of Hartford.

According to Tim Ericson, Co-Founder of CityRyde, a bike sharing consultant firm in Philadelphia, Zito’s task will be a lot easier said than done. “Things like this can move quickly if you have the full support of the city,” he said. “It’s possible to have it up and running in six months. But more likely, it takes at least a year.”

But that hasn’t stopped other cities around the country from starting their own programs. Washington, D.C. and Seattle are two cities in particular whose programs are thriving. “I’ve used the ones in Seattle,” said Brian LaVoie, Manager of the Streets and Traffic for the City of West Hartford. “I think bike-sharing is great. If I could bike to work, I would. But, I live about 25 miles away.”

Momentum Builds for Bike-Friendly Union Station

Via Design New Haven

The New Haven Register reports today that the city has received a $10,000 grant to improve bicycle access at Union Station, and also has submitted a federal funding request for $145,000 for on-street dedicated and shared bike lanes connecting Union Station to Downtown New Haven and neighborhoods to the south and north of the city, which themselves have bike routes planned to connect with other sections of New Haven. The funding requests and grants also contain provisions for improved bike storage (with something like the photo at left, from a small Swedish train station, as the eventual goal in terms of encouraging use). More specifics on a proposed route can be found in the article:

"The bike lane, signage and striping would take place along Orange and Humphrey streets, Whitney Avenue, Temple, George, Church and Crown streets and Union, Howard and Columbus avenues with $15,900 for bike racks and covered parking at the rail station."

Improved bicycle routes and parking at Union Station would not only provide improved efficiency for commuters, but would also potentially have a major impact on the city's economic development, public health and traffic safety, as bicycle lanes also tend to calm traffic, promote walkability, raise real estate values, increase bicycling use, help citizens save millions of dollars per year in commuting costs, and promote local retail districts. They could also have an impact on suburban areas, by making the land near train stations on Metro North, Shoreline East and the New Haven-Hartford-Springfield line more valuable.

Of course, to be truly effective and enable the majority of city residents to feel comfortable commuting via bicycle, designated bike routes must also be combined with traffic calming treatments that reduce vehicle speeds and create safer intersections. As the number of cyclists in Downtown New Haven continues to grow, transit ridership increases, and the potential citywide economic benefits of improved traffic safety are more widely understood, the political will for implementing these types of strategies -- which have been in use for decades in many other cities and countries -- will hopefully increase.

WTNH-8 also ran a video news segment on this story, with great images of overflowing bike racks at the train station and footage of Elm City Cycling's recent "Bike to Work Day/BTW Breakfast." Also see separate WTNH news coverage here. The $10,000 grant application was made possible based on the city's recent application to LAB for designation as a bicycle-friendly community. Click here for a thread summarizing previous DNH coverage of bicycle access on trains and at Union Station.

Cycling Activity vs. National Gas Prices

Thanks to Design New Haven  and Mark Abraham for this post!

Looks like the number of posts per day on the ElmCityCycling listserv, a forum for making New Haven more accommodating to bicyclists and pedestrians, is highly correlated with the national price of unleaded gasoline (click on chart to enlarge). Who would have thought?

With gasoline predicted to hit $6-10 per gallon as soon as a few months from now, the number of nonmotorized trips to work in New Haven is only likely to continue to increase. As a relatively flat and compact city, Downtown New Haven is already perfect for bicycling and walking, as evidenced by the fact that the city has one of the highest percentages of bicycle commuters in the United States (1.8%, versus 1.2% in Boston, 0.9% in Providence, 0.6% in New York City, 0.4% in Hartford, 0.1% in Bridgeport and 0.0% in Waterbury, according to the Census Bureau's 2006 ACS). During rush hour, there are already occasional bicycle "traffic jams" on the popular Orange Street bicycle lane. New Haven was also recently named one of the 20 most walkable cities in the United States.

However, improvements to the city's bicycle-friendliness are needed before the average area resident will choose to ride to work, or even use his or her bicycle for short trips (e.g., a 4-block run to the corner store). Considering that bicycles are already widely-owned (and very inexpensive), the most frequently given reasons why Connecticut residents don't bicycle more often - infrastructure and safety - are fairly easy to solve. According to numerous studies, infrastructure such as bicycle parking, bike-friendly street design, multi-use greenways like the Farmington Canal Trail and accessibility at train stations raise land values by an amount much greater than the investment put into them (in part because they tend to calm traffic). Reckless and high-speed driving and driver education can be addressed through community-wide efforts and traffic enforcement, and through measures such as anti-dooring ordinances like those found in Chicago.