> In Seattle and Portland the businesses within 1 block of new bike lanes declined faster after 2019.

I wonder if there was some event that generally killed businesses relying on foot traffic some time after 2019 that could help explain that outcome. Perhaps once that event is identified, we can consider what businesses did survive and compare them to the foot traffic heavy businesses and see if there's some other qualitative difference between those that made it through and those that didn't.

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themaninthedark 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I would appreciate sources from the GP but the claim was that businesses within 1 block of bike lanes declined faster then those without. The business community as a whole would be serving as the control for other external factors.

	▲	cyberax 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		To be fair, I don't consider my research all that great. This is not a good methodology because it can be affected by hyperlocal effects. I just used the same approach as in papers that looked at the _benefits_ of bike lanes. There is very little good-quality research on wider impact of bike lanes on business in the US. One pre-COVID study found little effect in either direction when a large LA neighborhood added bike lanes. The only definitive result for the US is that bike lanes have very little impact on the absolute percentage of bike commutes (it stays around 2-3%).

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cyberax 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Or maybe the general urbanistic upswing was able to overcome business-killing properties of bike lanes before?

If you look at research on bike lanes in American cities (or in other well-designed human-oriented modern cities), they typically _at_ _most_ don't affect businesses. There's scarce evidence of them helping anything but creating traffic jams.

> Perhaps once that event is identified, we can consider what businesses did survive and compare them to the foot traffic heavy businesses and see if there's some other qualitative difference between those that made it through and those that didn't.

I live in Seattle, and that's what initially motivated me too look at modern urbanism. I was very much a proponent of "stong towns", transit, and all other stuff before. Then I noticed that areas that get an "urbanistic renewal" always get worse around here, and that was even before COVID.

Now the difference is just stark. Seattle Downtown is a ghost town. Bellevue (a city across the lake from Seattle) did not do anything significant with its downtown car infrastructure, and it's thriving. And even in _Seattle_ a place called "University Village" is doing fine. Because it's away from transit, bike lanes, and has a lot of free parking.