Update 12/2/24, 1:15 PM: Evanston's Chicago Avenue Corridor Project, including the protected bike lane extension proposal, will be discussed at a community meeting on Tuesday 12/10, 7-9 p.m. at Robert Crown Community Center, 1801 Main St. in Evanston.
It's a common refrain in the city of Chicago: Converting car parking spaces to curbside protected bike lanes drives merchants out of business. We've heard it about Milwaukee Avenue in Logan Square, Clark Street in Edgewater, and Lincoln Avenue in Lincoln Square.
But there's been no convincing evidence that the scenario that shopkeepers warn about has actually happened in Chicago. Let's not count the Logan Square Hardware store owner who claimed he had to shut his doors because customers could no longer get "rock star parking" in front of his business. In reality, his slow sales might have had something to do with loudly playing anti-immigrant talk radio in his shop, in a neighborhood where many residents have come to the U.S. from other countries.
But this week's Evanston Now article, "Merchants say 'no' to protected bike lanes" in the northern suburb, is one of the first times I've heard about this kind of Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) behavior from shop owners in the 'burbs. Or maybe we should call it Not In Front of My Storefront (NIFMS) behavior.
Pushback to Evanston's plan to extend Chicago Avenue PBLs to Howard
As reported by Evanston Now, over 30 stakeholders along Evanston's Chicago Avenue, equivalent to Chicago's Clark Street north of the Howard Street border, have objected to plans to extend protected lanes south on the avenue. Currently there are PBLs on Sheridan Road and Chicago Avenue, running between Evanston's border with Wilmette, the next lakefront suburb to the north, and Davis Street. The proposal would build about two more miles of protected lanes between Davis and Howard, creating a seamless low-stress, north-south route for people on bikes, scooters, and other sustainable transportation devices, all the way across Evanston.
The blue line is the existing 1.6-mile protected bike lane route on Sheridan Road and Chicago Avenue between the Evanston/Wilmette border and Davis Street. The proposed new PBL on Chicago Avenue would run 1.9 miles between Davis and Howard Street, the Evanston/Chicago border, creating a 3.5-mile protected route. Continuing southeast from Howard on Chicago's Clark Street (what Evanston's Chicago Avenue is called south of the border), there's would be a 1.5-mile gap in protection until you reach existing protected lanes on Clark south of Devon in the Edgewater neighborhood. The Chicago Department of transportation should fill in that gap. Alternatively, a rider heading south into the big city (or vice verse) could pick up Chicago's existing Glenwood/Greenview Neighborhood Greenway route (dotted green line on the above map) at Juneway Terrace, just south of Calvary Cemetery and a few blocks north of Howard.
Rob Keding's handlebar video of riding Evanston's north-south protected bike lane route on Sheridan Road and Chicago Avenue from Wilmette to Davis Street, where the physical protection currently ends.
According to Evanston Now, the City of Evanston is applying for a $3 million Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program state grant to start the process of building the new bikeway, which was expected to cost a total of $13.3 million. The project, which has been in the works since 2020, would also include pedestrian improvements.
But some Chicago Avenue business owners, landlords, and managers are balking because the initiative would involve converting much of the car parking on the east side of Chicago Avenue to a two-way protected bike lane. The layout would be similar to Chicago Avenue north of Davis, and the Dearborn Street PBL in the Chicago Loop.
"Chicago Avenue is home to nearly 200 small businesses which depend on street parking for customer access," the merchants say in a letter to Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss and other City officials. "Making access difficult for their customers and eliminating half of the parking in the area is likely to cause significant reductions in sales and result in the closure of many of these businesses." When it comes to allegations that bikeways will bankrupt businesses, obviously, we've seen this movie before in Chicago!
Why the Chicago Avenue bike route shouldn't be moved to side streets
The merchants argue that, instead of installing new PBLs on Chicago Avenue, the City of Evanston should paint bike lanes on Hinman and Judson avenues, the first two north-south streets east of Chicago Avenue. "We are not traffic engineers," they concede.
Indeed, the NIFMS folks are not exactly bikeway planning experts. The Evanston Now report points out that Hinman and Judson are much skinnier streets than Chicago Avenue. While they each allow two-way traffic, they're really only about one lane wide, as narrow as only 34 feet in many places, with two car parking lanes.
That's definitely a tight squeeze for striping bike lanes, unless a lane of car parking is converted on Hinman and Judson. Evanston Now correctly noted that strategy would probably make many of the homeowners on the residential streets freak out, just like some of the merchants on the commercial strip. Moreover, Chicago Avenue is a key direct route across Evanston, whereas Hinman and Judson dead-end at Calvary Cemetery, which forms a barrier between the suburb and the city of Chicago.
How protected bike lanes helped Evanston reach Vision Zero
The Evanston Now article is generally well-researched, but oddly it leaves out another crucial argument for extending the protected lanes on Chicago Avenue: the news website's own previous coverage. Last January, it ran the article "City cited for drop in traffic deaths" by Illinois Answers Project's Alex Nitkin, which heralded the role Evanston's PBLs played in lowering the number of traffic crashes by 33 percent over the previous decade. Even better, traffic deaths in the suburb dropped by 44 percent during that time. And, impressively, from 2019 to 2022, the suburb literally achieved Vision Zero, with no traffic fatalities at all.
Even U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg gave a nod to the part played by Evanston's streets redesigns with protected bike lanes in achieving this milestone. At the 2023 U.S. Conference of Mayors, he noted that the suburb had "seen several years without a single traffic death thanks to robust Complete Streets programs [emphasis added], anti-speeding efforts and other measures."
Evanston Lead Engineer Lara Biggs explained the protected bike lane effect to Nitkin thusly. "The intent initially was just to create a way for people to safely bike around town. But when you put in a bike lane, you almost always have to narrow the traffic lanes, and… people start to naturally slow down." So installing the new planned protected lanes on Chicago Avenue would help make the suburb even safer, also benefitting pedestrians, transit riders and, yes, drivers.
Evidence that protected bike lanes are good for business
Moreover the merchants on the avenue shouldn't worry that PBLs on the avenue would lead to an overall drop in sales and tax revenue. Yes, there would be less "rock star parking" in front of storefronts. But it's important to remember that driving isn't the only way to access a business, and protected bike lanes help attract more sustainable transportation users to business corridors. (Painting bike lanes on Hinman and Judson instead of installing protected lanes on Chicago Avenue might have the opposite effect, diverting bike and scooter riders away from the retail street.)
Down the road on Clark Street in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood, some merchants were also concerned that converting car parking spots to PBLs would kill their business. But the protected lanes are attracting potential customers. When I recently hung out at near Granville Avenue and Clark, within 15 minutes I witnessed ten northbound bicycle and e-scooter riders.
It might not occur to business owners, but people using these modes are just as likely to patronize shops and restaurants as drivers are. Perhaps even more so, because sustainable transportation device users generally don't have trouble finding legal, free parking.
But don't just take my word for it that, despite gloom-and-doom predictions, protected bike lanes tend to help businesses rather than hurting them. Streetsblog NYC's Jesse Coburn reported that in 2017, critics of New York City's proposal for a PBL on Skillman Avenue in Queens insisted that it would cause sales to fall by 20 percent. Instead, sales in shops, drinking establishments, and eateries on Skillman’s primary seven-block retail strip went up by 12 percent altogether after the bikeway was installed in 2018, according to data from the City's Department of Finance.
And last July, Streetsblog USA's Kea Wilson reported University of Washington researchers found that a series of Complete Streets projects in Seattle had no negative effect on sales, and in many cases improved them. The study of seven corridors that underwent safety redesigns, including road conversions for bike lanes, enjoyed about 5 percent more taxable sales than comparable nearby roads.
So there's plenty of evidence that Evanston's Chicago Avenue merchants should learn to stop worrying and love the bike lane plan.
Read the Evanston Now article "Merchants say ‘no’ to protected bike lanes" here.
Read the Evanston Now article "City cited for drop in traffic deaths" here.
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