Study: Bike Lanes Are Good for Businesses

All business owners in the Philadelphia region, hear this: Bike lanes are good for your business. That’s according to a new study, which set out to determine whether a business’s proximity to a bike lane hurt or helped its bottom line.

Listen to this:

Kyle Rowe, a student in the Community, Environment, and Planning program, studied retail outlets’ sales before and after the construction of two new bike lanes in business districts in Seattle. His findings? Businesses earned more, in some cases increasing sales up to 400 percent.

You read that right: 400 percent. That’s like, a lot of dough. And while the bump in sales can’t definitively be attributed to the increase in two-wheeled traffic in front of the businesses, we can at least deduce this much: Your proximity to bike lanes certainly won’t hurt your bottom line.

Meaning? I’ll see you at the next bike lane community meeting.