GetAbout Columbia to add many more bicycle routes, lanes

Columbia, MO, Transportation Changes, Trip to Work or School, 2007 to 2008

An article in today's Columbia Tribune outlines the next phase of GetAbout Columbia's plan to add more bicycle routes and lanes around the city.

The previous round of bicycle routes and lanes, which added about 20 miles of bicyle routes around the city, combined with GetAbout's education and promotion program, nearly tripled the amount of bicycling in Columbia in the space of a single year. According to two studies, the amount of bicycling and walking in Columbia went up while the percentage of single-occupant vehicle commutes went down over 15%.

(Sidenote: There has been an ongoing "controversy" over the wisdom of spending a significant percentage of the non-motorized grant on education and encouragement. As near as I can tell no one involved in this controversy has bothered to educate themselves with the facts, summarized in the graph accompanying this article, about how much these programs have already been able to increase the amount of bicycling and walking in Columbia. It's all well and good to have an opinion about whether the education and encouragement programs were a good idea or not, but when the amount of bicycling nearly tripled and the amount of walking is up 60% in a single year--well, those seem like pretty good results to me. If I had previously held an opinion that education and encouragement were not good ideas I might change that opinion after seeing that data . . . )

The next phase of the on-street bicycle route project will greatly expand the amount of marked on-street bicycle routes and lanes and also includes a new way to mark the transition from bike lanes to intersections:

One option is to paint the entire bike lane green and post a sign alerting drivers to yield to cyclists in the green lane. Another treatment would paint green stripes in the bike lane to indicate a shared lane. At intersections where bike lanes drop off, another option is to stripe green the areas where bikes and cars merge. That option also would paint the words “merge area” on the pavement.

GetAbout is a $22 million federally-funded nonmotorized transportation project aimed at finding ways to encourage people to use alternatives to cars to get to work, school, shops and recreational activities. The council has already designated all of the money for various projects and last summer reduced the budget for street and directional marking from $2 million to $1 million.

The "high cost" of bicycle routes?
When you read the article, you'll see that both some city council members and many of the commenters on the article are bellyaching about the "high cost".

But in fact, spending a little bit of money to create a city-wide system of bicycle routes and lanes is by far the most cost-effective project that can be done. ("Little bit" in this context is defined in terms of overall transportation spending--where a single freeway interchange can easily be $20 or $30 million and re-surfacing a mile of road can cost $600,000)

Just for sake of comparison, here are some typical project costs for 80 miles of various types of transportation system--the approximate amount that will be in Columbia's on-street bicycle system when it is complete:

1. On street bicycle route & lane network: $1 million (~$12,500/mile)
2. Bicycle/walking trail network (paved): $12-$80 million ($150,000-$1 million/mile)
3. City street network: $80-$480 million ($1-$6 million/mile)
4. Interstate freeway: $720 million ($9 million/mile)

As you can see, the bicycle route markings are not just cheaper--the are dramatically cheaper. They are less than 1/10th the cost of the next most expensive option, which is itself a small fraction of the cost of the next level.

Of course, the on-street bicycle route network has an unfair advantage: It's simply being added to existing streets.

But that is exactly the point: It is being added to existing streets, at very, very little extra cost, and that means we are getting a whole lot more use out of our existing (and very expensive) street network.

And even though a bicycle route system can be added to current streets at very little cost, few cities in Missouri have bothered to do it.

The numerous benefits of inexpensive bicycle route networks
Right now people all across the U.S. are looking for ways to:

* Reduce transportation costs--both the cost of building roads and streets and the individual costs associated with gettin to work, school, shopping, etc.
* Reduce congestion
* Reduce pollution
* Reduce greenhouse gas emissions
* Encourage Americans to become more fit and less obese
* Make our cities and states more livable

Guess what--making a city bicycleable helps solve all of those at once.

And it is the most cost-effective way to have a positive impact on each of those problems. Every other solution costs more--a lot more.

As Columbia has found, you can create an entire city-wide on-street bicycle route network for about the same cost as building one single mile of new city street--and people really do use it.