John Minchillo/AP Photo
A cyclist in a face mask bikes northbound from the Manhattan Bridge in New York, March 2020.
Since mid-March, bicycle commuters have mostly abandoned the streets of Philadelphia. Home-to-work (and work-to-home) commuting has coasted downhill as those who can work from home do.
But a peculiar thing happened as the coronavirus consigned people to the reality of being walled in. Recreational biking has exploded, as a way for the stressed-out to get out and take advantage of car-free streets and fresher fresh air.
Bicycling has surged so much that Philly and other communities have opened new roadways to bicycles as popular cycling routes get too crowded. As the colder climes warm up and mandated social distancing becomes harder for people to tolerate, communities face the challenge of devising solutions that allow Americans to exercise without becoming potent new sources of COVID-19.
Those workers who can bike—like restaurant delivery people or others who can transport goods to customers—still do. Then there are new converts to cycling, including some transit-leery health care workers. Ancillary businesses like bike shops (not initially considered essential businesses until state officials like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and, finally, the federal government backtracked and added them to the mix) are doing a brisk business in sales and repairs.
In fact, business is booming for bikeshare companies that offer special deals and discounts. In New York, Lyft-owned Citi Bike provides free memberships for first responders, and health care and transit employees. Bikeshare docking stations near major hospitals have seen increased demand, and Citi Bike recently added bike stations in Washington Heights near Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center. Overall, the share system has seen a nearly 70 percent increase in riders. The downside of the biking surge, at least in New York, is that there has been an uptick in accidents: With more bikes on the road and more cars speeding because there is more open road in front of them, collisions are increasing.
For many, bicycling has become an important respite. Parks and off-road trail networks along rivers and creeks are teeming with more bicyclists and pedestrians than they can safely accommodate, according to Sarah Clark Stuart, executive director of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia. The group compared bike traffic data on off-road networks for the first three weeks of March 2020 to the same period in 2019. On many trails, traffic has doubled. On one scenic Schuylkill River route along Boathouse Row, where local rowing clubs stash their shells, the number of bikes using the trail skyrocketed by 471 percent.
That surge prompted local bicycling groups to petition city officials to open up another route, the nearly four-mile-long Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, normally closed to vehicle traffic only during summer weekends. The city finally opened up the route for daily bike travel, which promptly became crowded as well. Stuart’s group has petitioned the city to open up more roads; the city has yet to respond.
On the other hand, some cities, Cincinnati among them, shut down bikesharing during the health crisis. And in early April, Philadelphia police closed a popular section of Fairmount Park, the city’s largest, after crowds of people descended on the area. Mayor Jim Kenney has threatened to close down more parks if people continue to flout social-distancing mandates. Such threats worry Stuart. “People are anxious and they need to get out,” she says. “Reducing space is going to create more harm than good.”
Cincinnati is not alone. During cherry-blossom season in Washington, D.C., law enforcement agencies blocked off the Tidal Basin after residents surged into the surrounding areas to be outdoors and view the flowering trees. Hains Point, a popular cycling, jogging, and walking area near the Jefferson Memorial, also closed down. But city officials relented in other areas, where three major roads have been dedicated to socially distanced walking and biking. According to the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center at the University of North Carolina, Cleveland, Denver, Kansas City, and St. Louis, among others, have implemented similar regimes, dedicating streets to walking and biking to help residents maintain some semblance of normalcy during the pandemic.
The perils of failing to practice social distancing while cycling are real. Recently, while on an errand in the Kensington section of Philadelphia when the cyclist in front of him spit on the ground, Andy Metzger worried about “catching a faceful of COVID.” The freelance journalist has stopped biking for the moment but aims to get back to it eventually, outfitted with sunglasses and a homemade face mask. (How the disease may get transmitted during outdoor activity remains a subject of dispute.)
State and local transportation officials should heed this change, as cyclists will likely demand greater permanent and seasonal cycling opportunities in a post-pandemic world.
Although states like Washington and New York made significant strides in improving biking and pedestrian networks before the pandemic hit, it’s cities that have been more creative in trying to address demands for outdoor space during the crisis. According to Ken McLeod, policy director of the League of American Bicyclists, who compiles the Bicycle Friendly State report card rankings, state departments of transportation have been more concerned with accelerating highway and paving projects than “thinking tactically about how to improve people’s lives right now” by opening up otherwise empty roadways that fall under their purview to new users.
So it’s fallen to cities to transform four-lane streets into three lanes with one bike lane, or to allow people to spread out from sidewalks into one lane of traffic, or commandeer a parking lane. Or to block off lightly traveled neighborhood streets for weekend walking and biking—activities that could become attractive longer-term additions to the quality of life in many residential areas. Some people may even eschew public transit, at least for a little while, after the coronavirus all-clear has sounded.
State and local transportation officials should heed this change in public sentiment, as cyclists, converts and longtimers alike, will likely demand greater permanent and seasonal cycling opportunities in a post-pandemic world. “Hopefully, transit will bounce back,” says McLeod. “But a lot of people are scared about using transit, and allowing them to bike and walk places is an adaptation we should look into now—rather than just everyone going back to their car or truck.”
