How demonstrational bike lanes may save our bike lane dialogues

“There are no easy bike lanes left to be built in the city,” Mayor Muriel Bowser told the Southwest Neighborhood Assembly Community during its April 2023 monthly meeting.

Whether there ever were depends on your vantage point. Nonetheless, the District Department of Transportation is certainly planning, designing, and implementing more, and more sophisticated, bike lanes, in more places, than it was a decade ago. Commensurate with this increase in projects—which are necessary to achieve the ambitious mode-shift goals the District has set for itself, as well as its goal of zero deaths on its roadways—has been an increase in organized opposition.

The community engagement process has become increasingly utilized by those who oppose additional bike infrastructure to delay or even halt the implementation of such projects. Despite the vast majority of the general public being in favor of installing more bike infrastructure, the current process for community engagement fosters an environment where a vocal and organized minority can disrupt progress through speculation and bad-faith arguments. In response, bike advocates are obliged to defend the proposed infrastructure even if it’s flawed. The process often devolves into a contest of who can shout the loudest.

Regrettably, the original intention of engaging with the community on individual projects seems lost in the current approach. Instead, it has devolved into a polarized situation where two sides strive to convince government officials that they represent the broader public’s true views and best interests. This divisive dynamic undermines the essence of genuine community engagement and hinders meaningful progress toward reducing traffic fatalities. The mayor, for her part has acknowledged this fact: as The Southwester reported in its summary of SNAC’s April 2023 meeting, “[Bowser] did concede that, yet again, better engagement is something she needs to strive for. ‘What you’re saying is we need to do a better job putting down the bike lanes,’ she said.”

The level of speculation displayed at community engagement events is a result of the currently flawed community engagement process. Though the technology and methods exist to try and predict the result of the installation of new bike infrastructure, it is impossible to say for sure what all the impact of that bike lane will be.

It’s, understandably, not particularly pleasant to learn that you might be impacted by a change that you perceive as negative, and bike lanes are often, largely incorrectly, assumed to cause some sort of harm. A business owner who’s nervous about their already tight margins may process a bike lane as deleteriously impacting their livelihood; parents dropping their kids off at school who cross a bike lane may feel a jolt of anxiety when someone on a bike moves by quickly, and conclude it’s better if the lane weren’t there at all. Still, a fear of change often stems not from the change itself but from its uncertainty.

To sustain the development of increasingly ambitious bike infrastructure, governments must strive to minimize this uncertainty and speculation. An increasing number of cities have turned to demonstrational bike lanes to bridge the information gap.

Covid-era pop-ups

From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic a surge in demand for outdoor space and a newfound interest in cycling prompted many cities to respond by creating temporary or “pop-up” bike lanes. These makeshift bike lanes were established using easily deployable tools such as traffic cones, rubber curbing, paint, signage, and removable bollards.

Some outdoor public spaces created during the pandemic such as the numerous public streeteries have reverted to their previous uses, however many of the pandemic era bike lanes have become permanent fixtures. Decisionmakers in New York, Liverpool, Bogota, and Paris have observed the benefits pop-up bike lanes brought their residents and are attempting to make them permanent. Notably, the longest road in Mexico City, La Avenida de los Insurgentes, now has a permanent bike lane after a pandemic-era pop-up increased bike traffic on it by 353 percent.

In the DC region, several pieces of temporary pop-up pedestrian infrastructure have since been incorporated permanently. For example, Little Falls Parkway in Bethesda has undergone several variations of pedestrian use since the beginning of the pandemic and today stands on the cusp of being transformed into a permanent “open parkway.”

Pop-up bike lanes were a trend before the pandemic, and their use has enormous benefits. Studies have shown that their installation reduces exposure to nitrous oxide, increases the number of people biking, and, most importantly, creates an environment to garner public feedback on how the proposed infrastructure should work..

From pop-up to process

Translink, Vancouver’s transit authority, has developed a Rapid Implementation Design Guide that details how pop-up bike lanes can be transformed into a step in bike lane implementation. Translink’s design guide includes an option for “Demonstrational Bike Lane,” which utilizes pop-up methods to create temporary pilot projects designed to last a few hours or days:

“Rapid implementation allows for the faster and more cost-effective implementation of complete cycling networks. It also provides more flexible infrastructure that can be quickly adjusted in response to public and stakeholder input. This ultimately contributes to a smoother transition towards permanent bikeways.”

The installation of new bike lanes inevitably results in an increase in trips by bike via that infrastructure. But demonstrational bike lanes are not intended to increase trips by bike. Rather, they’re used to demonstrate the potential impacts of a given project on its surroundings, and create an environment where transit planners can collect real-world data.

Demonstrational bike lanes incorporate the cost-effectiveness of pop-up infrastructure and allow proposals to be easily modified or replicated based on the feedback received by transit planners. Once a demonstrational bike lane is completed, transit planners can engage the community in a data-driven and experiential dialogue rather than entertaining baseless speculations. This form of public engagement—modeling the actual project—allows for a more informed decision-making process.

By observing a demonstrational bike lane and considering public feedback, decisionmakers can gather valuable insights to make more informed decisions about moving forward with a specific project. This approach allows them to shift their focus during community engagement from questioning the project’s viability to enhancing its implementation and impact. By doing so, planners can ensure a more effective and well-received project that aligns with the needs and desires of the community.

Translink’s rapid implementation plan even allows for semi-permanent bike lanes to be installed. To quote from the design guide, under Translink’s rapid implementation plan:

Public and Stakeholder engagement and monitoring typically begins once the infrastructure is in place, as the rapid implementation approach provides community members with an opportunity to experience the project firsthand and can then provide input that can inform design modification.

The rapid implantation process can be a valuable tool for the DC region to address critical bike infrastructure needs quickly while still ensuring the community’s opinion is heard correctly. The combination of demonstrational bike lanes and rapid implementation can address bike infrastructure projects on a variety of timelines in terms of urgency, complexity, and potential community impact.

In fact, the DC region has its own roster of demonstrational bike lanes. In September 2018, DDOT implemented a protected bike lane on Kenyon Street NW for two days to “demonstrate how the proposed bike lane will function and to provide the public with an opportunity to speak with the project team.” The demonstration was praised for providing great insights to nearby residents, cyclists, and DDOT, and today, a cycletrack on Kenyon connects 11th Street NW to Irving Street NW.

Also in 2018, Bethesda implemented its own pop-up event on National Bike to Work Day to demonstrate a bike lane on Woodmont Avenue. Today, a permanent bike lane exists on most of Woodmont Avenue south of Old Georgetown Road, and was recognized in 2023 as being one of America’s best bike lanes.

Normalize it

Though they’ve been used successfully in the District and surrounding jurisdictions, demonstrational bike lanes have yet to become a fixture of DC’s planning process.

Protocol that allows—and encourages—DDOT to install a physical prototype on which to base public engagement would provide enormous benefits and make the DC region a leader in such processes. The agency is due for a revision of its Design and Engineering Manual, an appropriate place for standards and recommendations for the installation of demonstrational bike lanes, the collection of data about their use and effects, and the incorporation of that data into a final project’s design and implementation.

The mayor’s right: Installing bike lanes in DC, and beyond, is unlikely to get any easier. High-quality, safe bike, bus, and pedestrian infrastructure generally requires reallocating space away from drivers—no easy feat, especially during a time of dramatic uncertainty regarding the future of DC’s downtown. To meet the moment, transit planners should be allowed to have more tools at their disposal to more effectively make the case for building robust bike infrastructure, and to limit discursive fiddling based on speculation and unfounded attempts to delay.

However, such efforts will only be as effective as decision-makers’ interest in implementing protected bike lanes in the first place. Those who wish for more, better, and safer routes on which to travel by bike will need to continue to hold their elected and appointed officials to account to stand up for them to exist in the first place, and make it clear that they’re a part of a constituency who will vote them out if they don’t.