New York’s current bicycle lane installation program is receiving a significant amount of press. A post to the New Yorker blog by economist writer John Cassidy provides the drivers’ perspective: ‘when the city introduces a bike lane on a given street, it removes dozens of parking places’. His concern is that that elimination of on street parking spaces results in higher levels of congestion due to a greater number of drivers searching for fewer spaces.
Economist Felix Salmon of Reuters, in reply, points out the effect of the bike lanes on the number of riders: ‘Bike lanes attract bikes no less effectively than roads attract cars and the number of cyclists in New York has been growing just as fast as the city can create new lanes for them.’
Whilst the debate between those in favour of the new bike lanes and those against continues to gather significant press, Ryan Avent of The Economist, analyses the situation from an economic perspective:
“Now, if drivers paid for all the costs they impose on others, then it might be worth asking what the optimal level of bike lanes to have is and discussing whether the lanes themselves are subject to rising congestion and need to be priced. Of course, if drivers paid for all the costs they impose on others, there would be fewer drivers complaining about bike lanes and more people using them. As things stand, given that cyclists help alleviate some of these externalities (a cyclist takes up dramatically less road space than a car, doesn’t use on-street parking, does not emit ozone, and does not contribute to climate change) it seems quite sensible to allocate a larger share of New York’s roadways to lanes for cyclists. From an economic perspective.”
It may pay New York City to keep an eye on the outcomes of the installation of the SFPark system in San Francisco and consider whether a similar system can be installed to assist drivers find those elusive on street parking spaces.
And where are our Australian Cities in all this?