The case for biking in Pasadena
Why Pasadena is a great fit for bicycles
Pasadena is an outstanding place to ride a bike. I’ve lived in a few different cities, and I’ve ridden a bike in Washington, DC, West Virginia, and the suburbs of Maryland. Compared to most American cities, Pasadena has a few advantages that make it a nearly ideal place to ride:
Perfect weather With over 300 days of sunshine, cool temperatures every morning, and zero snow, there’s nowhere in America with more bike friendly skies. One day, climbing on the bike with my 4 year old son for our daily ride to preschool , I said, “It’s a beautiful day.” He complained: “Dad! You say that every day!”
Compact size Pasadena is only about 4 miles across. It takes about 20 minutes or less to get anywhere in the city on a bicycle.
Quiet neighborhood roads In many cases, all or most of a ride can be accomplished on quiet, safe, beautiful, streets.
Metro Access Bikes and trains go together like peanut butter and jelly. The Gold Line stations in Pasadena gives bikers a fast connection to points across Los Angeles
Mountains and palm trees … and parrots and gardens and shade trees and succulents … there is a lot to enjoy when biking around the City of Roses.
When Pasadena opened up streets to bicyclists in the 2016 CicLAvia event, 40,000 people showed up! Clearly, there are a LOT of people who would like to ride their bike in Pasadena. Photo by Micheal Juliano
Potential for growth
We know for certain that adding biking infrastructure to cities creates high rates of bicycle ridership - because it’s already happening! How high? In many European cities, bicycles are included in between 20% and 50% of trips! Compare that to American cities, where numbers like 1 or 2% are a lot more typical. For example, in Pasadena, 1.7% of people ride their bike to work. That means there’s a lot of room to improve! In America, there are a handful of cities where bikes are included in over 10% of trips. Given our perfect weather, beautiful mountains, and compact size, Pasadena easily has the potential to join this top tier of American cities with strong bike ridership.
Of course, it’s not just about getting to work. While some people need a car or transit to get to work, nearly everyone makes short trips around Pasadena for other things - like shopping, eating out, and for fun. I’ve found that quick trips around the neighborhood are often the easiest and most fun to make by bike. Rides to the park, picking up take-out food, and grabbing a quart of milk are great opportunities to leave the car at home and enjoy a few minutes of sunshine. Short trips like these - which make up around half of all car trips - are a perfect way to increase bike ridership and reduce carbon emissions.
Many cities in Europe see bicycles used in 20-50% of trips. The main factor leading to these high rates of bike usage are the existence of safe, protected bicycle lanes in these cities. [source]
| Location | % of commuters who bike |
|---|---|
| Davis, CA | 15.5% |
| Santa Cruz, CA | 13.2% |
| Boulder, CO | 10.7% |
| Palo Alto, CA | 10.0% |
| Somerville, MA | 9.0% |
| Pasadena, CA | 1.7% |
American cities with highest rates of commuting to work by bike, compared with Pasadena. With better bike lanes, Pasadena could easily be in this top tier of American cities.
More biking in Pasadena would be a win, win, win, win, win
I love using my bike to get around Pasadena, because I know it’s good for me, good for the people of Pasadena, and good for the health of our planet. Biking instead of driving doesn’t just solve one problem - it can help solve a LOT of problems. Given all the facts, a realistic goal is that 10% of trips in Pasadena include a bike. When we reach that goal, here are some benefits for the residents of Pasadena:
Pasadena city would save a lot of money: Bike infrastructure costs 70% less to maintain than roads for cars or buses, on a per traveller-mile basis. So, the city should see a 7% reduction to their overall road budget in this scenario.
Bicyclists would save a lot of money: Car ownership costs between $6,000 to $8,000 a year. I own a car, but even so, I estimate my regular bike trips save my family around $700 a year. If 10% of Pasadena residents saves this amount, that would be over $9 million a year of savings.
Equity and Social Justice: Pasadena has some of the worst income inequality in California (!) 20% of households in Pasadena get by on less than $26,059 each year. Combined with sky-high rent prices, these folks will really struggle to afford a car. By providing a fast, safe alternative to driving, better bike infrastructure will provide a key cost-saving alternative to these families, and even enable them to reach work or school faster and more reliably.
Happier, healthier people: Riding a bicycle to work reduces the risk of premature death by 41%, because moderate exercise greatly reduces rates of heart disease, cancer, and other common killers. In addition, bicycling increases emotional well being by reducing stress, anxiety, and depression. Plus: biking is fun!
Faster than the bus: Buses provide over 15,000 trips every day in Pasadena. Bus trips around town typically take 30 - 45 minutes or longer, after including time to wait for a bus and/or transfer. By comparison, a bike can get you door-to-door in 10-20 minutes. By the time the bus shows up, you are already at your destination!
Less traffic: 100% of drivers want to see less traffic on the roads. More people riding bikes in protected bike lanes means less cars on the road - and so a lot more space for people to drive. More bikers and less drivers would also free up parking spots, so that it would be easier for people in cars to find a place to park.
Affordable housing: The threat of increased traffic is a major obstacle to creating multi-family housing that is desperately needed by low-income families in Pasadena. If less people are driving cars, that means more people can live and work in Pasadena without clogging up the roads.
Cleaner air and less noise: Riding a bike is quieter, cleaner, and greener than driving a car. Reducing car use by 10% would have an impact on both the local air quality and global carbon emissions.
What will it take to get there?
People need to feel safe to ride their bikes
Here is some good news. When asked why they don’t ride bikes more often, there is a single, simple answer that most Americans provide: They don’t feel safe doing it! In fact, about 50% of Americans report in surveys that they would ride their bike more, if only they had somewhere safe to do it. Riding a bike on a road with fast moving cars is scary. These kinds of statistics are consistent with what we see in cities with strong bike infrastructure: in places where better bike lanes exist, large fractions of people do, in fact, ride their bikes.
The facts here are simple. Building safe, protected bicycle lanes is the single most important thing we can do to encourage bicycle ridership in Pasadena. To change the habits of 14,000 people, save millions of dollars, encourage social justice, AND provide cleaner air, we just have to get one thing right: build safe places for people to ride their bikes, that connects them with places of work, schools, and shopping.
In a study across multiple American cities, adding a modest number of bicycle lanes doubled the rate of bike ridership, over just a few years, while also reducing the rate of collisions.
This is a great figure from the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia. By counting the rate of bicycle users on various roads (BPH = Bikes per hour), they show that adding a buffered bike lane increases ridership by 3X compared with roads with no support for bikes. When people feel safe riding - they do!
This video shows how protected bicycle lanes make riders feel safe, and increase bicycle use.
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The city of Pasadena has a Bicycle Transportation Action Plan, made available in 2015. The plan prioritizes a number of streets in Pasadena where bicycle infrastructure should be created. While the plan is far from perfect, it does identify five roads in the “Project Prioritization Summary” where it recommends adding buffered or protected bicycle lanes. Of the 5 bicycle lanes studied and prioritized in 2015, to date, none of them have been built. In fairness to the city, there has been a great deal of work on several of these projects, and both the Union Street and Cordova Street bicycle lanes - both described in the 2015 document - are planned for construction sometime in the next two years. Still, this rate of progress seems far too slow. The Bicycle Transportation Action Plan was a relatively modest proposal, designed to be achievable in a few years. Now, 6 years later, instead of completing the projects and moving onto the next phase, not a single bicycle lane has been added in Pasadena. Given the huge pay-off of getting this right ($9 Million a year!), the city can’t afford to wait any longer.
Overcoming Obstacles
Why has Pasadena been so slow to act on its Bicycle Transportation Action Plan? I understand there are a number of obstacles. At the end of the day, what seems to be really lacking is political will. Here are a number of steps that I think would help create action on bicycle lanes in Pasadena:
Vocal Public Support To make brave choices, public officials need to know they have the support of constituents. E-mails to city council, public comments at meetings, yard signs, and public events can all help raise awareness. We’ve seen first hand this really makes a difference!
Quick-build methods Cities all over the country are embracing “quick-build” methods to set up bicycle lanes in months instead of years, and for tens of thousands of dollars instead of millions. For example, Pasadena used quick-build methods to quickly create outdoor dining spaces on Colorado Blvd during the COVID-19 pandemic. If a road as busy as Colorado Blvd can be improved in just a few weeks, so can other roads.
Stick to the facts Public discussions can sometimes go sideways, due to missing or misleading information. We have seen examples where good projects fail to go forward, due to imaginary or exaggerated concerns. Arguments against bike lanes should be considered in context, and should be rejected or ignored if they lack evidence. For example, if available parking spaces along a corridor are reduced by a few percent, that should be a small trade-off when creating a new bike route that will save lives and millions of dollars. Discussions related to traffic flow and available parking should always be rooted in data and realistic models.
Safer by default City streets are routinely re-paved, re-striped, or otherwise maintained. These maintenance events are opportunities to add buffered and/or protected bike lanes, with very little additional cost. City government should create policy to always make use of these opportunities, so that making streets safer and greener will become routine. California SB 127 provides a model for this: city policy should be to always make streets safer when paving or striping.
Identify funding opportunities Funding for city projects is always a challenge. Building a bicycle network in Pasadena will require identifying sources of funding. With political will, creative funding sources can likely be found and applied. For example, funding previously designated for the I-710 project is now available. Taking opportunities like this to fund bicycle infrastructure projects will be an important task for city staff and elected officials.
Let’s Get Building
By building safe, protected bike lanes, Pasadena can become a first-tier example of modern, clean transportation. Other mid-size, American cities have shown that ridership of 10% or more is possible, so that bicycles can be an equitable, cost effective solution to climate change. With Pasadena, the possible pay-offs are even higher, due to our year-round perfect weather and beautiful outdoor spaces. Moreover, once a year, Pasadena has the attention of the nation, as millions of people travel or tune-in to watch the Rose Bowl and Rose Parade. This national attention can make improving transportation in Pasadena a benefit not just for residents, but a model for the whole country.
Building protected bike lanes in Pasadena will save money, save lives, increase equity, and improve the quality of life for all city residents. Past inertia in maintaining outdated road designs is costing us millions of dollars a year, and is no longer acceptable in light of current research. Given the high stakes, we need to overcome this inertia, and move forward on building safe, protected bike lanes.
References
Pasadena’s Tale of Two Citites, by Peter Dreier AND Mark Maier (2019)
Cycling Facts, Lucas Harms & Maarten Kansen, Netherlands Institute for Transport Policy Analysis (2018)
NACTO Bike Share Equity Practitioners’ Paper #3, National Association of City Transportation Officials (2016)
WHERE WE RIDE: Analysis of bicycle commuting in American cities, by The League of American Bicyclists, pg. 10 (2017)
Pasadena Short Range Transit Plan, City of Pasadena Transit Division (2019)
Bicycle Transportation Action Plan, City of Pasadena (2015)
Commuting in Pasadena, CA by bestplaces.net (2021)
Disappearing traffic? The story so far, by S. Cairns, S. Atkins and P. Goodwin (2002)
Protected Bicycle Lanes in NYC, New York City Department of Transportation (2014)
Survey: 100 Million Americans Bike Each Year, But Few Make It a Habit, by Angie Schmitt, Streets Blog USA (2015)
2017 BIKE PHL FACTS: Exploring Fall 2017 Bike Count Data, Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia (2017)
Bicycle use soars following installation of protected bike lanes, (Study) Momentum magazine (2024)
