SAN DIEGO NEEDS TO DO MORE TO SAVE CYCLISTS
Last month, The San Diego Union-Tribune published a cartoon by Steve Breen showing a business owner lying flat on his back in a “new bike lane,” covered in the tire tracks of cyclists who, we are meant to assume, ruined his business by riding in a space that was once car parking.
A week later, a 51-year-old man was riding his bike down University Avenue when a driver hit him from behind. He was taken to the hospital in critical condition and died, becoming the 16th person killed while riding a bike in San Diego County in 2021, and the seventh in the city of San Diego.
That Breen could dare to draw a business owner being run over by cyclists in a city where people riding bikes are killed by drivers on a monthly basis shows the troublesome divide between the discourse around bike lanes and the true reasons for their installation. Business owners and their allies discuss bike lanes in terms of parking spaces and costs. Road safety advocates understand them as a matter of life and death.
Most of the criticism around bike infrastructure, like Breen’s cartoon, focuses on the misconception that bikeways hurt businesses whose customers use on-street parking.
This argument is simply unfounded, as Union-Tribune columnist Michael Smolens recently noted. Smolens cited a Bloomberg CityLab article that reviewed studies in several cities and reported every study on the subject has reached “a similar conclusion: replacing on-street parking with a bike lane has little to no impact on local business, and in some cases might even increase business.” Yet even while highlighting these economic benefits, Smolens questioned whether eventual ridership on 30th
Street would justify the city’s investment.
At this point, decades of evidence have proven that separated bikeways increase ridership. A 2016 study conducted in seven American cities found strong correlations between miles of bike lanes installed and cycling rates in every case. Cycle tracks, or bikeways that physically separate bikes and cars with bollards or other materials, increase ridership even more: While only 7 percent of Americans say they are comfortable riding in unprotected bike lanes, another 56 percent say they would ride their bikes more if bikeways separated from traffic existed.
Ultimately, however, these arguments about ridership are secondary. The first question for every infrastructure project should be whether it will prevent unnecessary death.
The data is clear on this: Bike facilities, and especially cycle tracks, save lives. Studies indicate that cycle tracks carry one-ninth the injury risk of roadways without bike facilities and reduce injuries for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists alike.
Why is it, then, that multiple opinions about bike lanes were published last month in the UnionTribune, without mentioning safety?
One reason might be that the deluge of headlines like this one on NBC 7 San Diego, “Cyclist hit by wrong-way driver, killed in Mission Valley,” dehumanize victims and allow us to forget that their lives are infinitely more important than parking spots.
To us, Matt Keenan, was far more than the “cyclist killed in Mission Valley.” He was the love of his wife Laura’s life, a dedicated and loving father and only 42 years old.
His 18-month-old son will never know his dad. He was his parents’ only child. Matt was a talented, caring and passionate physical therapist who helped heal many patients. He was also a charismatic, silly, thoughtful person and friend who was full of life and had so much more to live.
In addition, Matt was an avid cyclist. He rode for exercise, fun and transportation. He considered himself a defensive cyclist and was very selective about the roads he took. But to bike to most places in San Diego today, you have to ride on stretches of unsafe roadway.
On the night Matt was killed, he did everything he could to protect himself — riding in the bike lane with his helmet on and the brightest lights possible.
But he was defenseless in a narrow painted lane against a car going 35 miles per hour. If the road had a concrete barrier or even bollards, the driver could have slowed down, and Matt could be alive today.
Each one of the other 15 victims had a life just as rich as Matt’s. It is fair to discuss how any bike project will affect other road users. But those conversations need to start with the acknowledgment that bikeways save lives.
The first question for every infrastructure project should be whether it will prevent unnecessary death.
Keenan