As More Cyclists Take to the Road, Austin Tries to Keep Up

Tom Wald moved from Minneapolis to Austin in 1999. He’s been riding bicycles since he was a child, and it’s his main form of transportation. He says he sees Austin – and other cities – becoming more accepting of biking as a mainstream form of transportation.

“Biking culture is more vibrant now that it was six years ago,” said Wald, the executive director of Bike Austin, formerly known as the League of Bicycling Voters. “The biking infrastructure is more prominent, with many more bike lanes through the city, so more people see biking as an accepted part of Austin life. Cities are also starting to see biking as a real solution to health and transportation costs, so it’s nice to see bike culture moving more into the mainstream.”

Bicycling magazine recently named Austin the No. 13 best city in the nation for biking, touting not our roadways but the extensive network of mountain bike trails within city limits. However, all signs point to an increase not in recreational biking but in cycling for transportation, according to a study released in 2011 by Rutgers University. The number of bike commuters nationwide rose by a whopping 64 percent between 1990 and 2009. The number of bicycle trips made for transportation – as opposed to leisure – rose from 43 percent in 2001 to 54 percent just eight years later, and that trend is extending to Austin.

“We’re overwhelmed by the amount of people who come in as beginner [bicycle] riders because they’re fed up with parking and traffic,” said Rachael Cook, assistant manager of Bicycle Sport Shop on South Lamar. “We are selling a lot of hybrid bikes that people use for commuting.”

“Commuting traffic has definitely picked up; we’re selling more commuter bikes and accessories,” said Brent Nutting, a manager who’s worked at Ozone for more than five years. “People don’t feel like sitting in traffic anymore.”

Bicycling as a means of transportation is growing fastest in cities like Chicago, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco and Portland, Ore., where officials are actively working to grow the bike population, according to the Rutgers study.  As roadways like Texas State Highway Loop 1 (Mopac) and Interstate 35 become more congested, and more people than ever take to the streets on two man-powered wheels instead of four gas-powered ones, Austin is making moves to become one of those cities.

Ozone Bike Department on Guadalupe is seeing the same kind of growth.

“Biking not only contributes to health and improved quality of life for Austinites but is also an economic and environmental benefit to the City,” said Nadia M. Barrera, Bicycle/Pedestrian Project Coordinator for the Neighborhood Connectivity Division of the City of Austin Public Works Department.

The City of Austin has several bicycle improvement projects underway or planned for the next few years. As part of the 2009 Bicycle Master Plan, the City will spend about $500,000 over the next three years on new bicycle lane striping, signage and shared lane street markings across the city. Construction for the Boardwalk Trail at Lady Bird Lake is set to begin in August.  There are also plans to construct a pedestrian and bicycle bridge at Mopac over Highway 360, at the Greenbelt access near Twin Falls, as well as over Barton Creek, as part of the Mopac Mobility Improvement Project.

Additionally, the Bond Election Transportation/Mobility Committee proposed, contingent on funding, installing additional bike lanes, striping and signage on Burnet Road, North Lamar, Mopac and Riverside Drive and additional bike racks on Sixth Street.

These projects are all working toward the City’s vision for Austin’s future, officials say.

“Improved bicycle facilities implement the ‘healthy and connected’ portion of the recently passed Imagine Austin Plan, portions of neighborhood plans across the City, the Bicycle Master Plan (2009), the Downtown Austin Plan, the Austin Climate Protection Plan and more,” Barrera said.

The City is also working with two non-profit organizations on bicycle-betterment projects. Bike Share of Austin, modeled after similar programs in San Antonio, Denver, Washington D.C. and New York City, will launch in Spring 2013 and work similar to Zip Car. Members of the program will be able to “check out” a bike, mostly around downtown.

The aim of the project is to “create a more sustainable transportation network by providing a travel option that reduces vehicle miles traveled, improving air quality, mitigating congestion, and addressing the ‘first/last mile’ predicament often associated with the use of a public transit system,” Barrera said.

After applying for inclusion, Austin is also part of a program called the Green Lanes Project, an initiative from the national non-profit bicycling interest group Bikes Belong Foundation, aimed at bringing more protected biking spaces to city streets. The project is using the Rio Grande Avenue green lane, which runs from MLK Jr. Boulevard to 24th Street and provides dedicated biking space, separate from automotive traffic, as an example of the types of spaces it aims to increase.

The initiative kicked off this spring and will last two years. Austin was chosen as one of only six cities involved in the project; others include Chicago, Memphis, Portland, Ore.; San Francisco and Washington D.C. As part of Austin’s involvement in the Green Lanes Project, Dutch engineers from the Think Bike Initiative will travel to Austin and provide recommendations on and assistance in implementing bicycle-friendly projects.

It’s involvement in initiatives like these that helped Austin earn Silver status as a Bike-Friendly Communuity from the League of American Cyclists, said Carolyn Szczepanski, director of communications for the organization. The League was impressed by Austin’s progress, but the city could increase its rating, Szczepanski said, by fully implementing the 2009 Master Bicycle Plan, continuing to increase educational opportunities to motorists, adults and children; and increasing the number of arterial streets with bike lanes.

City officials say that although recent years have brought more support for bicycling initiatives, the movement has been on the City’s radar since the first bicycle program was formed in the late 1970s.

“Over the years, the Bicycle Program has grown in staff support as well as in support from upper management and elected representatives,” said Barrera, who estimated the number of daily cyclists in Austin to be between 14,000 and 28,000. “Working with local engineers from Travis County, the Texas Department of Transportation and the Austin Transportation Department, Bicycle Program staff has added or improved almost 30 bicycle lane miles per year since 2009.”

Nutting, the manager at Ozone, said he can see a difference.

“The City is doing more than ever; it’s a vast improvement over 5 to 10 years ago,” he said. “People are feeling more comfortable [riding on the streets] now. Before, [street riding] was a lot more dangerous.”

Still, some say the City isn’t doing enough. Pete Wall, president of the Yellow Bike Project, which serves as a community resource for encouraging bicycle interest, maintenance and ownership, said Austin has a long way to go.

“If you look at the long lines of automobiles outside every school, it is clear that parents do not think it is safe to let their children ride on our city streets,” said Wall, who stressed that because Yellow Bike is a collective, his statements represent only his own opinions. “The fact that cyclists are killed every year on some popular recreational routes, like 360, bears consideration. A bicycle-friendly city has people of all ages on bikes. This city has a long way to go.”

This spring in Austin brought one bicycling fatality, after a cyclist and a motor vehicle collided on Highway 360, as well as one near-fatality, when a bicyclist on Guadalupe was hit by a car that then fled the scene.

Even so, Wall added, the City has made good progress over the last few years.

“The City has been giving lip service to the cycling cause for many years, but in the past few, they have made a strenuous effort to install more bike lanes and deserve recognition for that,” he said. “The new bridge over Barton Creek near Mopac and 360 will be a signature project that will make it safer for cyclists, and the completion of the Lady Bird Lake boardwalk show that the City is moving in the right direction.”

Barrera said the most will be accomplished when the City and the bicycling community work together.

“Upkeep and maintenance toward the ultimate vision of a world-class bicycle network is made possible through close work with the Bicycle Advisory Council and local advocacy groups who challenge City staff to continually work towards superior bicycle facilities,” she said.

A shift in the public’s attitude toward cyclists also makes a difference. Wald said he’s noticed a change in motorists’ attitudes toward bikers over the last decade.

“Honking, tailgating … behavior like that is much less common in most parts of the city,” Wald said. “As a cyclist, you can usually find ways to avoid areas where that is likely to happen.”

Attitudes of Austin employers are moving in a more bike-friendly direction as well. For example, Wheatsville, the University-area co-op grocer, gives employees who commute to work on bicycle a $20 per month upkeep stipend, and HomeAway, an online vacation home rental site headquartered in Austin, was honored as a “Bicycle Friendly Business” by the League of American Bicyclists.

To encourage alternate modes of transportation, HomeAway, located at Fifth and Lamar, provides 62 bike lockers for employees, as well as a bike rack, repair tools and onsite showers and changing rooms. The company even allows employees the ability to check out bikes during the work day for running errands downtown.  HomeAway estimates about 15 percent of its Austin workforce bikes to work.

HomeAway “encourages employees to bike rather than drive to reduce the company’s carbon footprint and alleviates the strain on limited parking resources downtown,” said Brian Sharples, co-founder and CEO of HomeAway.

Reducing congestion and pollution in one of the worst cities in the nation for driving seems to be a common theme among all.

“Every cyclist that chooses to ride instead of drive removes one car from the road,” Barrera said. “Trips less than 3 miles take approximately the same length of time on a bicycle as in a motor vehicle without the pollution and roadway damage of a motor vehicle.” 

Wall echoes that statement.

“It is important to encourage more people to bike in our city because automobiles are the No. 1 source of air pollution, childhood obesity represents a serious health threat to the young generation," he said, "and a dependence on petroleum represents a danger to our very future."