"NYC Study Finds Protected Bicycle Lanes Boost Local Business."

Given New Albany's fairly compact layout inside the beltway, the utility of this approach embraces more than just business growth, although one imagines that economics should matter, even to folks living on Corydon Pike.

It also provides a convenient way to link neighborhoods with downtown and with each other.

Whether or not protected bike lanes are the right objective here can be debated, but the overall veracity of reconsidering our city's street grid for the contemporary world is far clearer. These streets were changed 40 years ago to reflect an emptying downtown and fear accompanying it. Now that downtown is filling back up, streets must be rationalized to reflect it. Otherwise, the goal of revitalization is being contradicted on a daily basis by infrastructural stasis.

NYC Study Finds Protected Bicycle Lanes Boost Local Business, by Mary Lauran Hall (America Bikes)

The road to recovery is in sight, and it has a bike lane.

The typical city street is a busy place. People riding bikes, walking, driving cars, and operating buses all have somewhere to to go and want to get there safely — and quickly.

But while we normally think of streets as pipelines for people and goods, public streets are about more than just moving from point A to point B. They're also corridors for public life. Streets are places where locals discover new hole-in-the-wall stores and restaurants, where window shoppers duck into shops to peruse, and where children convince their parents to stop — just for ONE second — to buy a cup of hot chocolate.

In other words, streets can also grow local economies.

A new study from the New York Department of Transportation shows that streets that safely accommodate bicycle and pedestrian travel are especially good at boosting small businesses, even in a recession.