Detroit's bike lane advocates need to raise their voices to get a better system

Stay the course, Mayor Duggan!

The City of Detroit has gone all in recently in creating bicycle lanes on city streets. From less than 10 miles of bike lanes a dozen years ago, Detroit now sports about 125 miles of bike lanes with many more in the works, including plans for such major routes as East Jefferson and Livernois.

But at an eastside community meeting Wednesday evening, city officials said that Mayor Mike Duggan typically gets so bombarded with complaints about the city's bicycle lanes as he attends neighborhood meetings around town that he has pondered scrapping the whole plan.

Naysayers typically think bike lanes take away parking spaces, slow down traffic, and otherwise inconvenience the motoring public.

These anti-bike voices sound so loudly that Duggan has asked his team to look at the pros and cons of eliminating bike lanes or moving ahead with the city's robust plan to create more.

At Wednesday evening's District 4 meeting at the Northeast Guidance Center on Conner, three city officials — Deputy Planning Director Janet Attarian, Public Works Director Ron Brundidge, and District 4 representative Letty Azar — said bike-lane advocates need to raise their voices to persuade Duggan to stay the course and not back away from the city's plans to create more and better routes for bikers.

They're absolutely correct. Scrapping the city's bike-lane program would prove a grievous mistake. It would produce a city that is less healthy, less attractive to newcomers, and less efficient to move around in.

Here's why:

As everyone acknowledges, Detroit offers fewer public transit options to its residents than almost any other big city. At the same time, at least 25% of Detroiters lack access to a motor vehicle. Our lack of transportation options makes almost all our urban problems worse, from unemployment to mental illness.

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A biking culture helps in many ways. It allows residents to get around the city even without a car. It contributes to better health outcomes by encouraging exercise. By narrowing traffic lanes, bike lanes make Detroit's very wide major streets easier for pedestrians to cross.

And a bike culture is good for business, too. It fosters neighborhood revivals and the use of shops, restaurants and other amenities that otherwise might get overlooked by motorists speeding by. Dollar for dollar, bicycle lanes remain among the cheapest urban improvement options open to us.

Even better, the creation of bike lanes typically comes as part of a "complete streets" program, which includes wider sidewalks for outdoor cafes, landscaped medians that provide a safe resting place for people crossing, and safe zones for disabled residents using motorized scooters who otherwise would be forced to the edge of traffic.

Admittedly the roll out of bicycle lanes in Detroit so far has proven less than smooth. Last year, the city began installing bike lanes on East Jefferson but stopped before installing those vertical markers or bollards to demarcate the lane. Many motorists, already driving too fast on Jefferson, simply ignore the lines and treat bike lanes as just another traffic lane.

Then, too, some motorists park their cars in the bike lanes around the city; some businesses move junk into the bike lanes as a sort of storage area; and the lack of a public education campaign for both bikers and motorists on how to navigate the system has created confusion.

The city officials Wednesday evening admitted all of these faults, apologized, and promised to do better.

Let's not make the ideal the enemy of the good. Detroit's current 125 miles of bike lanes, though inadequate, create a starting point for something much better. And the city's plans for hundreds more miles of robust bike lanes, protected from traffic and clearly marked, would create a city that is healthier, easier to navigate, and more welcoming to all.

Rolling out that plan will take several more years of work and fund-raising. But the immediate task is to make the message heard — that Detroit will benefit from its fast-developing bike culture, and that safe, convenient bike lanes remain an essential part of that better future.

So the next time you see Mayor Duggan at a neighborhood meeting, say "Yes!" to bike lanes.

Contact John Gallagher: 313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jgallagherfreep.