No, Bike Lanes Don't Hurt Retail Business

City retailers tend to overestimate the importance of parking to their business. They fail to see the many downsides of free parking (congestion and low shopper turnover, among them). They believe more people arrive at the store by car than actually do. They may not even realize that while driving customers spend more per visit, non-drivers spend as much or more in the long term.

And yet whenever a city considers installing a bike lane, rest assured some retailers will protest the perceived loss of automobile access. Take the bike lane that stole a dozen parking spaces from 65th Street in Seattle a couple years back (for reasons that will seem far less arbitrary in a moment). The typical comment from a bike lane opponent to the city's department of transportation went something like this: