Bike Lanes and Parking

I live on the East Side of Saint Paul in a neighborhood that is filled with public parks and has extensive winter ski/summer bike trails. However, these trails are not well connected to Downtown Saint Paul or the rest of the Twin Cities bicycle network. This makes bicycle commuting a challenge and also reduces the amount of recreational cyclists who visit the area. This should be changing. The city Public Works Department has announced that it intends to put in bike lanes on Upper Afton Road this summer as part of a resurfacing project. Because of the proposed changes to the parking set up, a community meeting was held this past Thursday and a public comment period is now open before a hearing and vote by the City Council later this spring.

I made a point to attend this meeting because I am both a bike commuter and recreational cyclist and knew that someone needed to speak for the rest of the neighborhood. Upon arriving at the meeting, it was largely as I had expected: most of the attendees were residents of the affected street and almost all of them were vehemently opposed to bike lanes, to loss of parking, or to both. This was not a particularly rational view because, as someone who bikes and drives that street daily, I have come to the same conclusion as the city parking survey, specifically that there is very little street parking utilization in general, so very little will be "lost" by the residents. Their opposition, therefor, struck me as a product of emotion, entitlement, misunderstanding, prejudice, and irrationality.

Some opposed residents were just not good at logic and listening. They continued to bring up unrelated issues, unrelated streets, or issues that the bike lanes would help resolve (like speeding, bike lanes make a road seem narrower which has been demonstrated to lead to lower speeds). Fortunately the city planning people, neighborhood council members, and City Councilwoman were all very patient and repeatedly explained the benefits for these people.

The less rational, more emotional, and occasionally prejudiced residents were far more difficult to deal with. They tended to have stereotypes about bicyclists. They had unfounded beliefs about level of usage (both of parking and bike lanes). And had a number of other unrelated complaints about how it would be paid for (via wheelage fee, not special assessment) and land values/property taxes (if anything, they should go up with a bike friendly neighborhood). There were also some very weird, barely concealed racist elements, especially when an elderly crank started ranting about how he "paid a lot of taxes" and then the city "stole" one of his parking spots to put a bus stop in and now is taking away the others for bike lanes. His digression on the "whiskey bottles" and major transit center that the buses service was an appallingly low level of discourse that marked him pretty clearly as an entitled, racist, obstructionist who likely sincerely felt that he owned the street in front of his home (despite the fact that it belongs to the city and therefor all of its residents). This belief in ownership of parking is understandable, but wrong, and street planning decisions need to be made with the best interest of an entire community in mind. Indeed, that is why Saint Paul has an extensive and detailed bike plan for developing bicycle infrastructure so that it might someday catch up with Minneapolis and its enviable bike culture. While not everyone is happy, usually bike lanes come to be seen as a benefit and the controversy quickly fades away.

So, yes to bike lanes: better commuting infrastructure, safer way for kids to get to school and playground (both of which are on the proposed path, movement toward a more integrated recreation network, safer streets, better property values. No to excess on street parking which has myriad problems and causes many more. And really, the issue isn't the biking (or the buses, or the racism), it's the weird American relationship with cars and the places we put them.

As some of the anger I witnessed at the meeting shows, people have often irrational beliefs and emotional responses to parking issues. They feel entitled to public space in front of their home, to free parking when they shop and run errands, and are often oblivious to the explicit and latent economic and environmental costs of the excess of, often empty, paved space, much of which is mandated by city building and zoning codes.

In addition to the carbon output of cars in commute, there are additional carbon costs just from circling a block looking for a meter or a space, especially in areas where parking is under priced (a subsidy to businesses at the public expense). Furthermore, parking is the largest land use in a city, and allowing it to be free greatly influences the transportation choices people make (with both economic and carbon costs imposed). As mentioned above, much of it is legally required, even if it sits empty on supposedly huge demand days. Some places are starting to rethink what parking lots can be, either by redesigning them or by adding supplementary secondary uses (as solar farms, drainage areas, or tree-lined grids). For much more on parking lots, I highly recommend this entire series from Sightline (much of which has also appeared on Grist).

As for my local parking issues, Saint Paul has finally moved into the world of thirty years ago and decided that it will start charging for parking at night, begin using event rates in certain areas, and expanding meters to previously free areas that are high traffic. While each is a small step, when put together they will make progress toward rationalizing the use of one of the city's largest public properties (its streets) and generate much needed revenue for infrastructure and other public works projects. If it also encourages people to use more environmentally sound transportation methods or to take advantage of the expanding bicycle infrastructure, even better.