Last month I wrote about how bike share makes small, but real and measurable improvements in the environment, health and congestion. But I left out this study from Pittsburgh which showed how adding bike-sharing to a neighborhood decreased the need for parking.
After bike share was introduced, the researchers found a statistically significant difference in demand for parking between the two neighborhoods during morning and afternoon commuting hours, as well as a significant effect during lunchtime hours.
Bike-share trips replaced at most about 69 car trips per day, out of 2,250 daily parking events in the neighborhood of Shadyside. This is a 2 percent decrease in parking demand (adjusted for the lost curb parking space for the installation of the bike docks) after the program’s launch in 2015.
Okay, so that’s not exactly a sea change in commuting patterns. But while those numbers are small, the benefits of that change could add up.
The researchers estimate that level of trip replacement over a month would produce approximately 1,346 fewer car trips, 82.5 fewer gas gallons, 76,470 calories burnt, and 0.73 fewer metric tons of CO2 emissions from trips to Shadyside.
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