T hat extra time on the road costs drivers millions of dollars in time lost." In an article by Georgia Public Broadcasting, Peter Biello said, "W ithout the e-scooters and e-bikes, people mostly turned to personal vehicles and ride-sharing, which added 784,000 hours of travel time each year for Atlantans. In 2019, the city banned the electric devices, and the results spoke for themselves. For example, i nstead of an apartment owner looking at this as an opportunity to create a competitive advantage, they mainly see it as a disruption."Īddressing the first argument, about congestion and commuter times, take a recent comparable example in the notoriously congested city of Atlanta, GA, which brought in e-mobility solutions as an experiment to ease congestion. "It's the short sighted nature of how everybody looks at investment strategies. " I don't even know how many times I've had this conversation with people," He said. They are the factors that, on the surface, you would think are driving the controversy around bike lanes, however, Bill Klehm thinks the reality is somewhat of a different nature. These are the talking points used to leverage sudden and drastic, eleventh-hour changes to the proposed bike lanes in downtown D.C., despite three years of planning and public meetings on the matter. The addition of bike lanes will negatively impact the economics of retail businesses, and subsequently, tax revenues for the city.Transforming service lanes into protected bike lanes will increase congestion and, ultimately, commuter times.as an example, the arguments against the implementation of new bike lanes on busy, congested city streets boil down to two things: If you take the current situation in Washington, D.C. The Arguments Against Bike Lanes Don't Add Up "So this conversion is going to be painful, but if anybody thinks this shift is not going to happen, they're very sadly mistaken." cities were built for cars and not built for a multimode transportation network," Klehm said. "One of the points of reality is that U.S. Millennials (those born between 19) are driving 8% less than Gen X (1965 to 1980), and 9% less than younger baby boomers (19)." generational groups and their Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT). A recent post on breaking down American driving trends reported that, according to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, "T here is an increasingly large divide between U.S. This point is important to note, because what the emerging generation of consumers value, and subsequently, what they demand is evolving, says Klehm. If consumers didn't want it, we wouldn't be having this conversation." Consumer demand is the root of all of this. Building cars and building the infrastructure went hand-in-hand, the infrastructure followed demand as did policy. There was no infrastructure, but there was innate consumer demand for a change in the way people were mobile. "I n the early 1900s, the US consumer, predominantly wanted a new independent form of transportation, automobiles offered that. "I think people need to at least have the opportunity to consider what's really happening behind the scenes," said Bill Klehm, CEO of of e-mobility company ebliss. Regardless of the fact that research has shown time and time again that multi-modal transportation not only improves economic conditions for local businesses, including increases in foot traffic, it is still met with frequent resistance. It boils down to forces trying to make even the modest of changes towards more sustainable and non-car friendly transportation, and groups of other stake-holders who those changes as an impediment to their profitability. There are forces in urban areas across the United States having these same conflicts over and over. A recent battle in the nation's capitol over the building of bike lanes has ignited a familiar conversation about the economics of multi-modal transportation.
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