As Downtowns Struggle, Businesses Learn to Love Bike Lanes
From Manhattan to San Francisco, the need to rethink the urban core is encouraging business improvement districts to change their tune on prioritizing cars.
In early March, New York City Mayor Eric Adams stood on a stretch of Broadway just above West 25th Street to present Broadway Vision, his administration’s plan to transform the famous corridor with bike lanes, low-traffic shared streets and plazas closed to cars.
The mayor brushed off concerns that the changes would snarl traffic. “There’s a culture shift that must take place in this city,” Adams said. “The number of pedestrians that walk clearly outnumber the number of drivers.”
Looking on next to Adams was James Mettham, president of the Flatiron NoMad Partnership. That’s the business improvement district, or BID, that represents some of the largest developers and property holders on Broadway, including countless eateries and bars.
The effects of the plan, whose latest phase in Midtown finished work in late June, can be easily seen. On a bustling spring afternoon, Mettham led a tour of the new streetscape. Every new outdoor table was taken. Cyclists flew down a new two-way “bike boulevard.” And NoMad Piazza — a pop-up plaza that was among the earliest pandemic-era outdoor dining experiments — looked more like Milan than Manhattan.
“Before 2020, we were talking about one shared street,” Mettham said. “Now we have six.”
Getting support from business groups for these kinds of street changes is something of a role reversal. BIDs emerged in the 1970s and ’80s, when US cities, wracked by crime and fiscal woes, struggled to retain downtown retailers and employers. By collecting fees from property owners within the district, BIDs aimed to fill in gaps, funding supplementary services like street cleaning, security, landscaping and marketing. Historically, BIDs also typically favored access for cars, prioritizing suburban commuters and visitors with amenities like parking discounts and public lots. Indeed, the built environment of the American downtown — a “precarious urban monoculture” optimized for white-collar work — is one that these groups helped cement into being.
So it’s striking to see the same groups now bang the gong for bike lanes, vehicle bans and pedestrian-focused facelifts. Reeling from the rise of remote work and the ongoing effects of the Covid pandemic, business groups are embracing policies and practices they long shunned.
In New York City — which has 76 BIDS, the most of any US city — the effort to trim traffic lanes and make Park Avenue look like a linear park has been led by the business group there, the Grand Central Partnership. Downtown Brooklyn’s pedestrian-priority plan came from a BID. And some of the most popular Open Streets, the pandemic-era program that restricts traffic on certain streets for other activities, are business-focused, like 5th Ave in Park Slope and parts of Chinatown.
Outside of New York City, business groups have advocated for expanding bicycling and walking infrastructure at the expense of vehicles in San Diego, Washington, DC, and elsewhere.
Not all BIDs have changed their tune: In Toronto, for example — the birthplace of business improvement associations — a business group battled a proposed protected bike lane in 2019; in the Bronx, a local BID is trying to kill a busway plan. (This despite an abundance of research showing how bike infrastructure boosts the bottom line of adjacent retailers.) BIDs have also drawn controversy: Critics say that these groups exert too much influence over public space, and their reliance on private security and surveillance has raised equity concerns. By absorbing some city responsibilities, some argue BIDs let cities off the hook. And BIDs remain largely out of the picture in smaller cities, residential areas and low-income communities, in particular.
But in many major cities, these groups are powerful local players. The paradigm shift that’s now underway could pay big dividends for walkability boosters — and be crucial to the survival of the urban core.
A Post-Pandemic Reckoning
In explaining his group’s role, Downtown SF Partnership deputy director Claude Imbault described Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, fit for BIDs.
At the base of the pyramid are public safety and cleaning — the priorities that led business owners to organize the first improvement groups. Above that are placemaking and economic development, which are interconnected, Imbault said. “What we’re saying is that the built environment has a place in downtown’s economic recovery.”
At the very top of Imbault’s pyramid is advocacy — a job that, in San Francisco, is demanding special attention. Since the pandemic, the city’s business district has become a poster child for urban existential dread. Its office vacancy rate recently hit a new record high. The BART rail system’s ridership remains frozen at a third of what it was in 2019. And a perceived sense of insecurity thanks to fewer people on the streets of the Financial District isn’t helping.
“We’re struggling, and the reality is that there’s a media ecosystem reinforcing a message that it’s scary to come downtown,” said Imbault. “[Businesses] are just saying, ‘You guys, we need your help.’”
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