EDITORIAL COMMENT:
Once again shopkeepers are getting measured for their chainmail suits, ready to mount the battlements and wage war against the bike lanes coming to their street.
Oxford Street in Sydney is the latest front to open up in the global struggle over the sacred text that proclaims that only people in cars shop.
In its long history Bicycle Network has fought this battle over and over, mostly successfully: the shops are intact, the bike lanes are busy, the wounds of battle have healed, the memory of conflict has almost completely receded, and commerce in the street has rolled steadily on, ebbing, and flowing, according to the whims of the market.
The plentiful people on bikes are barely noticed.
Yet loins are being girded yet again, this time in Oxford Street.
There are now decades of research into how, where, and why people shop.
It shows that while most shopkeepers in shopping streets believe their customers arrive by car, in reality they do not.
Yet the fear that a loss of car parking will send businesses broke exists, and retailers scoff at the economic studies of their streets, flinging accusations of bias at those doing the counting.
Is there anyone who can make this case honestly and forcefully, yet not be challenged? Yes, there is: the tax man.
Interestingly, in some cities around the world, the local cities and counties charge a sales tax on retail transactions: they know about every dollar spent in every business over the course of years.
If a shopping street in one of those cities was to be fitted with bikes lanes you would soon know whether business was up or down because it would show up in the tax receipts.
This just happened. Valencia Street in San Francisco is a long and wide shopping street that had far too much traffic for anyone’s good and was upgraded with two bike lanes along the kerb, traffic lane reduction and car parking thinned, but with some logistics parking retained.
City authorities wanted to know if the bikes lanes and the loss of car parking did have a negative effect on business. They looked at before-and-after sales tax receipts for the street, and 27 other, similar commercial corridors in the city for the period before and after the bike lane installation, and the period of COVID impact on the economy.
They also looked at eight major lines of business to establish if there were variances between them.
As we would expect, the bikes lanes and the parking reduction had no effect on tax remittances in Valencia Street.
COVID had a devastating impact on all the streets, but most streets generally recovered.
However, Valencia Street was unusual in one respect: it had a much higher than typical proportion of family apparel stores, and these stores are a long way from having recovered since COVID, possibly because of the trend towards online sales in that sector.
The bike lanes were installed in the second half of 2023 and the study shows there was no impact on overall sales in the street either during or after construction.
Same as it ever was.
Part 2.
Readers should note that although the Valencia Street bike lanes were originally kerbside, they were later repositioned to the centre of the street. This was not a success, and plans are now underway to again align the lanes along the kerb.
Transport for NSW is running another round of public consultation on the Oxford Street East project, inviting the public to share their ideas to make it a vibrant and welcoming place for the community. To get involved, check out the webpage here.
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