This article was first published in The Mercury newspaper on Wednesday 22 January 2025
The belief that bike lanes pose a threat to businesses is not held up by the evidence.
Some people see a parked car and equate that to a business customer but don’t make the same assumption when they see a person. Even though it’s people who buy goods and services, not cars.
Most modern cities recognise this and are making it easier to move people in and out by increasing the travel options available.
Hobart, Launceston, Devonport and Burnie are all relatively compact cities and many trips are close to home.
By making it easier to walk, ride, and scoot for those short trips, cities provide another option for people needing to get to work and school or visit shops and services.
This requires reimagining the road space to make room for safe pathways that will move more people. It’s not replacing the travel options we have, but adding to them.
A common complaint about proposals for safer pathways into cities is that “we’re not Amsterdam or Copenhagen”, but Amsterdam and Copenhagen are only what they are because leaders made the decisions they did.
The changes to these cities are relatively recent. The 1970s oil crisis and road safety concerns helped to change attitudes and the following 30 years saw the implementation of useful bike networks that are now known around the world.
And rather than say “we’re not Amsterdam” and doing nothing, other cities have embraced similar changes because they make sense for the economy, environment and personal health and wellbeing.
Texas is one of the last places you might think would make it easier to ride a bike but Austin made the decision to build protected cycleways in 2010 and now has around 80km. Other US cities to wholeheartedly embrace people movement include Portland, Minneapolis, St Paul and Boulder.
Closer to home Geelong, Bendigo, and Wollongong have all implemented safe access to their cities with plans for more paths and lanes. Not to mention the more extensive networks in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Wollongong has spent the past 10 years upgrading and building 27km of cycling routes, with plans for another 85km of off-and on-road paths to be built by 2030.
Sure, some of these cities have wider streets than Hobart so it’s easier to add bike lanes. But most European cities have narrower streets than ours and far more people and still manage it. That’s because they choose space-efficient transport.
Walking, riding, scooting, motorbikes and buses are much more space efficient than private car travel so cities that support these modes can move more people per hour.
Economic evidence from cities that have supported safer walking and riding access is that it either has little impact on businesses or improves the bottom line. New Zealand researchers recently found that bike lanes help increase property values slightly.
Many people fear change but the reality rarely bears out their fears. We brought the designer of the Frome Street bikeway in Adelaide to Hobart several years ago and he talked about the hotel manager who was the most vehement opponent of the bikeway. That was until it was finished and his customers started asking him where to hire bikes!
Cities are not shopping malls. They provide a range of services, activities and experiences that are unique and attractive to many people. Making our streets safer, cooling them down with street trees and providing low-carbon transport options are what we should be doing to help our community thrive, business being one element of that equation.
So, while we may not be Paris, London, New York, Washington, Montreal or Munich or pretty much any other city, we can be Hobart. We can continue to be one of the coolest small cities in the world, move more people safely and efficiently, and the sky won’t fall in.
Alison Hetherington, Public Affairs Manager – Tasmania, Bicycle Network.
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