Transportation Alternatives has released a new study [PDF] showing that people who walk, bike and take transit to the East Village are local retailers’ best customers.
In a random survey of 420 East Village pedestrians, 95 percent of respondents said that they usually walk, bike or take transit to the neighborhood, with only 5 percent using a taxi or private automobile. TA asked respondents how often they visit the area and how much they usually spend per visit, using the replies to calculate how much each person typically spends per week in the area. The interesting patterns emerge when you segment that information by how the respondents got to the neighborhood. It shows that bicyclists and pedestrians are bigger spenders than those who arrive by taxi and car.
StreetsBlog has a few charts and some analysis if you'd like to dig into it here. The report itself is 19 pages.
Bonus chart!
One reason for the disparity may be that those with cars have less disposable income, since so much of it goes into paying off, maintaining, and parking the private killing machine.
ReplyDelete- East Villager
This survey is sponsored by "extremely objective" Transportation Alternatives and all but 2 survey collection days stopped at 4pm, with the other 2 stopping at 9pm, which presumably excludes all bars and most restaurants. What is the East Village known for? Where do people spend the most money? What are the source of all those "horrible outsiders" invading the neighborhood via taxicab? Bars and restaurants. Next.
ReplyDeleteThe 13% who say protected bike lanes make them less inclined to ride are assholes. They are probably the ones who make the eye rolling claim that the bike lane is actually the most dangerous place to ride. Most of them probably ride fixed gears that help them "ride with the flow of traffic". Basically treat it like some kind of video game. Well let me tell you. The lanes might have their own hazards such as walkers wandering off the curb without any care for what's going on behind them and cars parked in or opening doors into the lane, but if you ride a bike at a speed that makes sense for a busy street, like I do, the bike lanes are great. They offer a buffer against vehicle traffic. If nothing else they increase driver awareness of bikes. Just because you can ride your bike 30 mph through Manhattan doesn't mean you should. Cars have a speed limit, bikes have one too, it's called common sense. Those 13%, what they really mean to say is they don't like the bike lanes because they make it harder to run red lights, make it harder to ride like an asshole.
ReplyDeleteAgree w 707, lanes have their hazards, but those hazards generally wont kill you the way a Mac truck will kill you.
ReplyDeleteThere does seem to be some polling bias in this study. By just reframing the study, you can concede that bias and maybe even make a stronger point: "we polled at these times of day to avoid the nightlife bias, and try to capture how non nightlife consumers access the neighborhood".
I think its also probably true that most people walk, this is NYC after all, and that the bikes are a minority in that group, and TA likes to obscure those numbers to say there are more bikers than there are. But I havent read the study. Regardless, I am all for anything that makes bikes and peds, and mass transit better and safer.
Since the only language his agency speaks is money, please send this straight to Bloomie's desk with orders to start valuing us and stop terrorizing us
ReplyDelete