Climate Cities

Sprawling homes susceptible to flames in California

The impact of the still-raging California fires on humans and their homes is tragic and lamentable — but far from unexpected, thanks to homeowners’ tendency to sprawl out and nestle […]

$5 could be yours

It’s morning in St Louis, and we’re getting ready to talk with some of the movers and shakers in the world of riverfront greenways. While preparing, we ate at a […]

… we’re off to St. Louis

Despite the whirlwindiness of our visit to Dubuque, Sarah and I feel like we got a good picture of the work that’s going on there. It helped to have a […]

Exploring Dubuque by boat

What floats our boat? Um, we’re not quite sure, but that didn’t stop us from taking the helm like two river rats making our way downstream. Thanks to the (very […]

Granted, it’s early yet

Just met with Laura Carstens, planning services manager for Dubuque. The money quote: “For years, we turned our back on the river. Now we’re making it our front door.” Later […]

Exploring Dubuque’s riverwalk, tourist-style

While Katharine spent the day getting free lunch and talking to city planners, I spent my day exploring what, exactly, all those city planners have spent all their time planning. […]

A meeting of the minds in the Masterpiece on the Mississippi

There’s no free lunch — unless you happen to be a Grist reporter crashing a sustainability conference in Dubuque. I showed up, hungry, for a 12 p.m. presentation by City […]

A morning meeting with the mayor of Dubuque

I wish I could tell you I wrote this from atop a log raft while floating down the Mighty Mississippi, but sadly the wifi access out there ain’t so mighty. […]

Even the greenest suburbs can’t touch low urban emission rates

Last Sunday, the Washington Post published a piece by Joel Kotkin and Ali Modarres which sought to debunk the ideas that dense urban areas are greener than their suburban counterparts […]

Bikeways pay for themselves

A decade ago, we wrote that the bicycle is one of the world's seven everyday wonders because it's so simple, effective, affordable, and pollution-free. To that list, we might have added "enriching."

Bicycling for transportation pumps money into local economies. Bikes are wheels of fortune. (Thanks to Flickr photographer hanbyholems for the picture to the right.) If your community spends money building bikeways, you and your neighbors will cycle more. Your cycling will put extra money in the local economy. (I'll explain how in a moment.) The extra money will make the community rich enough to pay for more bikeways. More bikeways will induce more cycling, and the virtuous circle will continue.

Let's break the process into steps.

Building bikeways costs money.

Bikeways are cheap, especially compared to roads and trains, but they're not free. In the Puget Sound area, construction can easily cost more than $1 million per mile for a new trail or lane -- not counting land. Seattle's 10-year Bicycle Master Plan sketches a citywide network of cycling routes estimated to cost about $240 million. Retrofitting all of Cascadia's communities for Bicycle Respect -- integrated systems of separate, signaled bikeways as found in parts of northern Europe -- would cost billions of dollars. (Sort of like RTID/ST and Pacific Gateway.)