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Why Bicycle and Pedestrian Staff?
Bicycle and pedestrian program managers are common in U.S. cities and, along with other transportation planners and bicycling advocates, are a critical part of creating a bicycle-friendly community. Staff help communities plan for and respond to the needs of cyclists and pedestrians.
Why Communities and States Need Bicycle and Pedestrian Staff, an Advocacy Advance Report released today, analyses 40 of the largest U.S. cities and shows that cities with bicycle and pedestrian staff have higher levels of bicycling than the cities without staff. Cities with larger staff – both in count and per capita – have higher levels of bicycling than cities with smaller staffs.
The Alliance for Bicycling & Walking surveyed the 50 largest U.S. cities to find how many bicycle and pedestrian staff they employed. Of the forty cities that responded, only two do not have any staff dedicated to bicycle and pedestrian issues. More than half of the responding cities have one or two staff spending at least part of their time on them. A quarter of the cities have more than four staff working on bike and pedestrian issues.
What impact do bicycle and pedestrian staff have on bicycling levels? The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey measures the percentage of workers who use the bicycle as their primary mode of transportation to work. Comparing staffing levels to the commuter data shows that larger bicycle and pedestrian staffs are correlated with higher bike commuter levels. The cities without bike staff had the lowest average bike commuter share.
As the size of a city’s staff increases the average bike commuter share also increases. Cities with more than four staff averaged a ten times greater share of bicycle commuters than cities without staff – 2.1 percent compared to 0.2 percent. The cities with more than four staff had more than three times the average bike commuter share of cities with four or fewer – and double that of cities with three to four staff. This shows that cities that make a serious commitment to bicycle planning see a greater return on investment than cities with fewer staff. The same trend exists when using the number of staff per million residents. The ten cities with six or more staff per million people had an average bike commuter share of 2.4 percent, more than four times the average for cities with one or fewer staff members.
The League of American Bicyclists’ Bicycle Friendly Community (BFC) Program recognizes communities that have made dedicated efforts to improve bicycling conditions. Applicants describe their investments in five categories of bicycle-friendliness: engineering, education, encouragement, enforcement, and evaluation and planning. Staffing levels are only a few questions in the comprehensive BFC application, but there is strong correlation with BFC recognition. Cities with large bicycle staffs are more likely to have accomplished more for bicycling in their communities than other cities. The most bicycle-friendly city in the sample, Portland, OR, has a larger staff than all but Minneapolis and the highest bike commuter share with 6 percent.
Eighty-eight communities in the U.S. have achieved bronze Bicycle Friendly status. Only 36 have received silver, gold, or platinum recognition. The elevated status of the top three categories is reflected in staff sizes. Non-BFCs average one and a half staff, bronze BFCs average three staff, and the top three categories combined average 11 staff. Larger staffs get communities to the next level.
Without planning for bicycling, a city’s transportation network is incomplete. Employing bicycle and pedestrian staff shows that a community is committed to a comprehensive transportation system; they are critical to integrating bicycling into the municipality’s plans and projects. Their impact is measurable.
Bike commuting levels and Bicycle Friendly Community recognition patterns show that larger staff investments lead to better bicycling outcomes. Having at least one staff-member focusing on bicycle and pedestrian issues is an important first step toward bicycle-friendliness. The route to higher levels of bike-friendliness, though, is best planned through the combined efforts of the city, bicycle advisory committees, advocacy organizations and advocates. Advocates should work with their cities and towns to hire bicycle and pedestrian managers.
Read Why Communities and States Need Bicycle and Pedestrian Staff.
See all of the Advocacy Advance Reports here.
Darren Flusche
League Policy Director
Flusche joined the League in April 2009 and has a B.A. in history from Syracuse University and a Masters of Public Administration with a concentration in public policy analysis from New York University.
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May 6th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Interesting article. Question… Is this a chicken or the egg scenario? Is the bike/ped staffing a response to the bike/ped usage, or is bike/ped usage a response to bike/ped staffing (project implementation)?
Evidence can be seen for the latter, where a dynamic leader can come in and shake things up, such as Janette Sadik-Khan in NYC and others. However, these dynamic leaders are the exception, as they have the political power to implement change.
However, in my experience it is likely the former. Many bike/ped planners are fairly passionate, but are low enough in the bureaucracy to not have the political power (or funding levels) to staff or implement their plans. Often, because they do not handle the multi-billion dollar projects (freeways, major corridors), they don’t gain the experience or political networking skills to rise up in the organization. When they leave the organization (lower chance of promotion without the big ticket stamps on the resume), the bike/ped program often goes dormant for a year or two until someone else picks it up, spends several years learning the program, getting excited about it, and then eventually leave in frustration. The cycle then repeats.
However, with passionate, organized advocacy groups, external pressure on elected officials (who often have not been on a bike for decades or rarely walk farther than their mailbox), can allow the lowly bike/ped planner to slowly make progress in the getting something accomplished.
May 6th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Well said, Alan, and fair question.
I think what you’re seeing is a virtuous cycle where bicycling begets planning and planning begets bicycling. As you point out with your NYC example, the cycle can be started with planning — but I actually think jump-started is the better word because bicycling in NYC certainly pre-dated Sadik-Khan (I speak from experience).
In any event, the answer to a chicken or egg scenario is to get a chicken or get an egg. Either can start the cycle.
The lesson from the data is that any bicycling community worth its salt has made a serious commitment to bicycle and pedestrian planning.
May 7th, 2010 at 9:45 am
[...] League of American Bicyclists writes about how important it is for cities and states to have dedicated bicycling staff if they want to see [...]
June 9th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
For some cities such as Detroit, this study is far off the mark. The city of Detroit has practically zero staff dedicated to biking and walking. However, our non-profits have significant bike/ped staff. Correct me if I’m wrong, but with Minnesota’s Midtown trail being city-operated, they get a huge boost in staff numbers putting them at the top. Detroit doesn’t get to count our 24+ RiverWalk staffers because they don’t work for the city.
June 10th, 2010 at 9:35 am
Hi Todd,
I’m not sure that I understand the critique. The examples you gave strongly reinforce the conclusion that cities with larger bike/ped staffs have more positive, measurable outcomes for cyclists. Minneapolis has a large bicycle staff — even if you only count the seven (non-trail) staff listed on their contact us page, they’re solidly the top tier of staff sizes — and they have an elite bike commuter level to show for it, second after Portland. It’s also a Silver Bicycle Friendly Community, which means they are doing a wide-range of good things for bicycling, beyond they’re commuter level.
Detroit has no bicycle staff to speak of and has a very low bike commuter rate, 0.31%, just a third of average rate for the 70 largest US cities in 2008.
That doesn’t mean that there are not a ton of people like yourself doing great work, but it suggests that the city has some work to do in terms of mainstreaming bicycling as transportation for the people of Detroit. Minneapolis has had great success with that, in part, at least, because of their city’s commitment to planning.
(For the staff counting methodology refer to the Alliance for Biking & Walking’s Benchmarking report.)
June 10th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
I was probably too brief to be clear.
There are significant bike/ped staff in Detroit but they are not city staff. Services and planning that many cities commonly provide are provided by non-profits in Detroit.
For example, the Detroit RiverWalk trail has significant bike/ped staff — but they’re a non-profit providing the same function as what the city of Minneapolis provides with the Midtown Greenway. The Minneapolis employees count in this report, our non-profit employees don’t.
It shouldn’t be assumed that bike/ped staff are always city staff or that city staff levels always reflect commitment. Detroit simply doesn’t have the financial resources that other cities do — hence the non-profits and private foundations have filled the void.
Also, I consider the ACS bike commute data for Detroit to be largely irrelevant. The error margins are so high (0.3% +/- 0.2%), they don’t include mixed-mode travel, and Detroit’s unemployment rate is 30% but in reality may be 50%. And the ACS population estimate for Detroit was off by about 100,000. We just don’t have good travel mode stats in the city. Even still, I’m sure our commute rate is below Minneapolis’.
June 10th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
I think it’s fair to say that Detroit is an exceptional case for its economic situation; and it’s worth pointing out that there are various ways of doing things. And there are certainly other examples of private entities supporting the work of municipalities (Arlington County, VA comes to mind).
Would you agree, Todd, that, if funding allowed, the city’s bicycling conditions could benefit from a city-based program manager and staff? (To say that doesn’t take anything away from the great work the Detroit’s non-profit partners have done and are doing.) Should you ever decide to make a case for city staff, I would encourage you to use this report. Even if you adjust Minneapolis’ number (in case they’re over-counting) the point still stands.
The ACS commuter numbers have their problems for sure, but since they use the share of workers that worked the week before the survey, not share of population, unemployment levels are taken into account.
June 10th, 2010 at 10:31 pm
“Would you agree, Todd, that, if funding allowed, the city’s bicycling conditions could benefit from a city-based program manager and staff?” I would agree only if they were guaranteed to be there over the long run. There are no guarantees in today’s Detroit government. Some (but not enough) of our non-city ped/bike staffing arrangements offer a more stable and sustainable model. For example, those RiverWalk staff are funded through the interest on an endowment. I have more faith that money will continue to generate interest in the future than an elected mayor will remain committed to funding biking and walking staff.
You’re probably right about Detroit being the exceptional case, but our collaborative public-private partnership couldn’t benefit others. (I will be presenting at Pro Bike/Pro Walk on this subject.) I’m curious to learn more about Arlington County, too.
Also, I would estimate there are 30-some bike/ped-related FTEs among the Detroit non-profits but less than one among city staff. For certain, it’s more difficult to determine those numbers when people are spread across many groups!
June 11th, 2010 at 10:09 am
Check out BikeArlington:
http://www.bikearlington.com/pages/about/
Sadly it is because there are no guarantees that we wrote this report. Trying to give advocates some ammunition to keep the pressure on cities and show them that city leadership helps push bicycling-friendly conditions forward.