The number of people biking on 2nd Ave in downtown Seattle is up an average of 19 percent year-over-year since the July 2017 launch of private bike share services. And the trend appears to have accelerated as SDOT opened a vital extension of the 2nd Ave bike lane through Belltown in January and companies added more shared bikes throughout fall 2017, eventually reaching 10,000 by the end of the year.

So far in 2018, 2nd Ave bike counts are up an astounding 37 percent. These increases are far beyond the expected year-to-year variations due to weather or special events.

The combination works. When the city builds downtown bike lanes that more people feel safe using and people have convenient access to bike share, more people will bike.

Seattle has all these pieces working together right now. All the city needs to do is keep it going. Keep adding more connections to the downtown bike network, and keep working with private companies innovating ways to improve access to bikes. Every time the city makes a new connection, the whole downtown bike network becomes more useful for more trips.

And private bike share companies, operating at no cost to the city, are like adding carbon-free fuel to that fire by dramatically increasing the number of people who can take advantage of these new bike lanes. People across the region no longer need to get their own bikes downtown in order to bike there. In a recent survey, about three of four bike share users reported using the bikes to access transit. The bike network and bike share and working together with transit to move people to and through downtown.

But new bike lane connections that should be under construction right now are delayed, as Mayor Jenny Durkan’s administration has pushed back key bike lanes in the near-term plan to improve mobility downtown by several years. People clearly want to bike downtown, but a single safe street just is not enough. (more…)