But how would business survive when people won't be able to drive and park?
This is a myth. Studies have shown that replacing parking spaces to accommodate bike infrastructure has little to zero negative impact. In fact, it can actually boost sales.
Resources
How Paris Plans to Make the Seine Swimmable by 2024 - Bloomberg
https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/rabxob/battle_over_bike_lanes_pits_businesses_residents/
A lot of charts to suggest that taking away lanes and parking has no negative impact. Even though they spend less, they take more trips. So I’m not sure if you can use this as a reference when trying to do car free day.
Parking isn’t as important for restaurants as the owners think it is
https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/rabxob/battle_over_bike_lanes_pits_businesses_residents/
A study done on restaurant owners on what is their perception on how many people drives. Spoiler alert: they were wrong. On a side note, most of the revenue comes from non-car people.
The incredible value of cycling and walking goes beyond economic benefits - Sustrans.org.uk
https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/rabxob/battle_over_bike_lanes_pits_businesses_residents/
Why Car-Free Streets May Be Here to Stay - YouTube - Bloomberg Quicktake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2HvW2iGNRk
At 9:56, merchants even want all parking gone so that it is more accessible for pedestrians because sales are better. This clip is taken from Utrecht: Planning for People & Bikes, Not for Cars - YouTube. You can see it at 4:25.
At 10:12, there is a 10% boost in sales in Madrid.
Acland St Traders
https://www.victoriawalks.org.au/Acland_St/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/melbourne/comments/rmkuzn/am_i_the_only_one_that_thinks_its_insane_that_we/hpnqg2y/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/rn70go/this_entire_thread_is_so_based_and_gives_me_hope/
The traders overestimate how much of their customers are driving when in fact, most of the their customers come to the shop via walking.
By making their place more walkable, they are able to get brand loyalty from their local customers.
They recognised that their largest and most loyal customer group was actually local. Improving the walking environment for them was likely to actually increase their loyalty and might help attract them back to the area more often – which would translate into a bonus for local business.
Do the sums: bicycle-friendly changes are good business
https://theconversation.com/do-the-sums-bicycle-friendly-changes-are-good-business-58213
- https://www.reddit.com/r/melbourne/comments/rmkuzn/am_i_the_only_one_that_thinks_its_insane_that_we/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/rn70go/this_entire_thread_is_so_based_and_gives_me_hope/
In Valencia Street, San Francisco, traffic lanes were slimmed to slow down cars and accommodate other road users. Nearly 40% of merchants reported increased sales. More than 60% reported an increase in the number of customers who ride bicycles.
New York implemented a raft of changes across the city including traffic calming, separated and protected bike lanes, and dedicated bicycle signals which resulted in significant rises in retail sales.
In Bloor Street, Toronto, a study of merchants and patrons found only 10% of patrons drove to the area.
People tend to overestimate the number of people who drove to their shops.
It gets tiring having to prove that it’s possible to live the way so many people around the world already live : fuckcars
https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/rsgqs1/it_gets_tiring_having_to_prove_that_its_possible/
This is an image of a walkable street where there’s arrows pointing out people buying groceries, disabled people in wheelchairs.
The Business Case for Car-Free Streets - Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-11/the-business-case-for-car-free-streets
This is an article and research on how car-free streets were attracting more customers. It did a study on a few number of streets in the United States during the COVID 19 pandemic.
As a share of all restaurants across San Francisco, eateries on Valencia saw 18% more consumer interest on car-free days compared to the start of the pandemic.
Restaurants on car-free Vanderbilt Avenue in Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights neighborhood reported an average of 54% more customer visits after the first month of the program
Every Study Ever Conducted on the Impact Converting Street Parking Into Bike Lanes Has on Businesses - Bloomberg
- https://reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/ucg80w/carbrain_spotted_in_the_wilds_of_cambridge_ma/i6bw3r0/
Numerous studies were done to find the impact of removing street parking in favor of bike lanes in multiple cities. They found that replacing on-street parking with a bike lane has little to no impact on local business, and in some cases might even increase business.
Is Groningen the most walkable city in the world? - YouTube - cities4people
In the 70s, business owners were against the idea of making the city center car free [3:48]. But cars don’t do the shopping. People do. Now, when the city wanted to remove bicycle parking spaces during COVID but the business owners were against that. It’s the total opposite from the 70s. [5:37]
Why Walkable Streets are More Economically Productive
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/16/why-walkable-streets-are-more-economically-productive
“In the typical market, an additional one point increase in Walk Score was associated with between a $500 and $3,000 increase in home values.”
Furthermore, a pivotal report by Elizabeth Bent and Krute Singha of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority uncovered that “travelers using [transit or walking] spend more per month than those traveling by car.” Interestingly, while the amount that transit users and walkers spent at area businesses on each trip was less than the average car driver’s spending, the transit users and walkers made more trips per month, which added up to higher spending overall.
Suburbia is Subsidized: Here’s the Math [ST07] - YouTube - Not Just Bikes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
- https://reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/tcnb52/dense_mixed_use_neighbourhoods_are_the_solution/i0hp17q/
- https://reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/taykkp/but_my_taxes/i05dojf/
At 7:52, mixed-use walkable neighborhoods perform better than car-centric neighborhoods.
Shoppers’ Mobility Habits: Retailers Overestimate Car Use | Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies
https://www.iass-potsdam.de/en/news/shoppers-mobility-habits-retailers-overestimate-car-use
- https://theap.substack.com/p/sorry-im-late-walking-was-a-nightmare?s=r
- https://reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/tvc7q1/dont_let_your_city_become_venice/i39xahm/
Retailers always overestimate how much people come to their shops via cars when in fact this study in Berlin states otherwise:
The researchers surveyed around 2,000 customers and 145 retailers on Kottbusser Damm (Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district) and Hermannstraße (Neukölln district). The vast majority of shoppers - 93 per cent - had not travelled to their destination by car. 91 per cent of the revenue generated by these businesses came out of the wallets of customers who walked, cycled or used public transport to reach them. Customers that drive to the shops accounted for just 9 per cent of sales.
Danforth Study: Bike lanes, On-street parking and business
https://www.tcat.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Danforth_Final_Edit-compressed.pdf
In this study, they found that:
- Less than 1 out of 5 visitors to Danforth Avenue claimed a personal vehicle as their chosen mode of transportation to the area
- Those that drove to the Danforth spent less money than people who used other modes of transportation
- Visitors to the Danforth would prefer to see widened sidewalks, bike lanes, less onstreet parking and an increase in off-street parking. Merchants, however, generally preferred no changes to the current street allocation, or an increase in parking.
They also found that the majority (81%) of the visitors to Danforth Avenue use public transit, walk, cycle or take taxicabs.
Pedestrianised Streets & Urban Wellbeing: the Case of Church Street, Bengaluru | BYCS
https://bycs.org/church-street-bengaluru/
Church Street in Bengaluru is closed for vehicular traffic every Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 AM to midnight between November 2020 and April 2021.
Here are the results from this project:
70% of shop owners stated that pedestrianisation was a good idea. More than 50% of restaurant and shop owners noted an increase in customer footfall.
Full article: Measuring the Local Economic Impacts of Replacing On-Street Parking With Bike Lanes
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01944363.2019.1638816?journalCode=rjpa20&
A study was done in Toronto, Canada to remove 136 on-street parking on Bloor Street. They found that there is no negative economic impacts associated with the bike lanes: Monthly customer spending and number of customers served by merchants both increased on Bloor Street during the pilot.
Due to this, bike lanes on Bloor Street were made permanent in November 2017.
Anatomy of a Protected Bike Lane: Infographic shows overwhelming benefits of good street design | Broken Sidewalk
https://brokensidewalk.com/2016/anatomy-protected-bike-lane/
A similar study from Salt Lake City showed that along a new Protected Bike Lane, sales through a commercial strip rose 8.8 percent compared to just 7 percent citywide.
Montreal to make 10 streets pedestrian-only during summer | Montreal Gazette
The fact that merchants, via local business development associations known as Sociétés de développement commercial (SDC), want to bring back pedestrian streets shows they must be good for business, Plante said.