Bicycles Are Good For Business

A great illustration that auto parking needs to be balanced with plenty of bicycle racks.

Here is a nice piece on the benefits of promoting cycling for businesses in Long Beach. There are some good testimonials from small business owners regarding the benefits of cycling infrastructure for local economic development. It shows what the commitment of a community can do, from the Major, but more importantly, the community members themselves, to make their towns and cities more bicycle friendly.  This is something I hope Reno businesses and those involved with the economic development of Reno will bear in mind in the downtown and up and coming Midtown areas in particular.

Excerpt:

Perhaps most innovative has been the city's effort to establish bike-friendly shopping districts -- the first in the country, officials say -- engaging local merchants by showing them how, contrary to common belief, biking can actually bring more customers and vitality to shopping districts. 

"The math is pretty simple," says April Economides, the principal of Green Octopus Consulting and the leader of the city's outreach to local businesses. "You can park 12 bikes in the amount of space it takes to park one car. And someone who shifts from owning a car to a bicycle tends to have more discretionary income, because, for a commuter, the typical cost of a bicycle is $300 a year, compared to $7,000 a year for a car." 

Economides, a vivacious 36-year-old whose family owns one of the best-known restaurants in town, describes herself as a "social change agent" who leverages the power of small business. "At first, most merchants didn't think about bikes or even had a negative view of them," she says. "My job was to educate them about how biking can put more money in their pockets."