In fall 2019, Ann Arbor opened the city’s first two-way protected bikeway along William Street. Since then, the city has installed more bikeways, including two-way bikeways on Division Street and First Street in 2021. The city has recently also improved existing bike lanes along State Street, greeting returning students in fall 2023 with a freshly painted, protected bike lane running from the Michigan Union to Oosterbaan Field House. The Michigan Daily set out to investigate the motivation for these improvements and what might come next.
In an interview with The Daily, Maura Thomson, Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority communications manager, said the city decided on median-protected bikeways after spending time gathering community feedback on the idea.
“We had this idea that we wanted to work on placemaking and making our streets safe and comfortable for all users,” Thomson said. “We wanted to increase accessibility and give people more options than just driving their car. We understood that having safe infrastructure is what’s going to encourage people to make different choices. So we went through a pretty robust public engagement process, which led to our first round of projects.”
The DDA is an organization within the Ann Arbor municipal government that focuses on projects to revitalize and maintain the downtown space. Not only does the DDA maintain the city’s public parking system, but it also takes the lead on most large-scale infrastructure projects, including Ann Arbor’s bike lanes.
The bikeway projects are part of the DDA’s People-Friendly Streets project, which aims to make Ann Arbor’s downtown both safe and accessible to pedestrians, cyclists and cars. In follow-up surveys conducted in 2023, the DDA found that its ongoing projects have decreased crash and injury rates along key downtown streets, such as Catherine Street and Miller Avenue. More accessible bikeways have also increased bike use as a mode of transportation to get from their neighborhoods to downtown, with 85.7% of respondents saying they are more likely to go downtown because of bikeway access.
The decrease in injury rates ties into the city’s commitment to Vision Zero, a global campaign that strives to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries. In an email to The Daily, Suzann Flowers, Ann Arbor transportation program manager, said bike lanes play an important role in achieving these goals.
“Our transportation master plan outlines two key pillars as goals of the plan: zero deaths by 2025 and zero emissions by 2030,” Flowers wrote. “And the A2Zero Climate Plan goal indicates a 50% reduction in vehicle miles traveled. I bring this forward to help explain that biking is one strategy that we are using to achieve these goals.”
Thomson said a key motivation for selecting where to place new lanes in Ann Arbor comes down to street size and potential for neighborhood connections.
“When we did our planning, we looked at data, we did counts of pedestrians and vehicles and street width,” Thomson said. “We wanted an east-west connection and north-south connections, so William Street, especially with the proximity to the University of Michigan all the way to the Old West Side, rose to the top as a candidate for a two-way protected bike lane. The width of the street lended itself to allowing for that two-way bike lane and we were able to leave most of the parking, so it’s balancing a lot of needs when you’re changing a street configuration.”
Despite serving as a main commercial hub for the city, Main Street is not completely owned by Ann Arbor. Parts of the street fall under the Michigan Department of Transportation’s Trunkline Highway System. Due to this, the street is required to fit highway standards, restricting the city’s ability to change the road layout. The city also faces difficulties on State, where a bike lane currently ends at its intersection with South University Avenue.
In an interview with The Daily, Engineering senior Joseph Ryan, president of the University Urbanism Club, said bike lanes are sometimes restricted by road layout, due to the prevailing method of placing them on pre-existing streets.
“Unfortunately, the way we build bike networks in the United States is we build them alongside or directly on existing road facilities,” Ryan said. “We don’t build many separated parkways (and) unfortunately, the geometry of infrastructure sometimes makes it so that you can’t continue that network.”
On streets that are adjacent to the U-M campus, the city attempts to minimize disagreements between the city and the University. Flowers said the Ann Arbor Transportation Commission works to develop bike lanes with student pedestrian traffic in mind.
“The city coordinates with the University on projects that are near or adjacent to University property,” Flowers said. “Our transportation team is made up of transportation planners and transportation engineers to ensure we are planning and designing these high-intensity areas for the types of movements we typically see, such as high pedestrian traffic, high bicycle use, along with frequent transit service.”
The 2023 survey data suggests that Ann Arbor’s new and improved bikeways are popular among residents. Ryan said he uses the bike lanes frequently to travel across the city.
“I’ve noticed that Ann Arbor is very bikeable,” Ryan said. “It’s surprising how quick you can get to certain places in Ann Arbor by bike. My roommates and I would go to the farmers market quite often over the summer and into fall. Walking there, it’s about a 15-to-20 minutes walk from where I live. But getting to the farmer’s market turns into seven minutes (by bike).”
While the bikeways are popular, national examples show that local business owners often oppose decreasing car access, arguing that motorists and on-street parking are vital to the survival of their businesses. The DDA had a similar issue, but Thomson said the COVID-19 pandemic helped temper opposition to the redevelopment projects.
“You have a number of different demands and desires, and when you’re dealing with the public right of way, it’s always a tough balance,” Thomson said. “(The COVID-19 pandemic) showed some businesses that were convinced the on-street parking was keeping them going, with some of the street closures during the pandemic, (that) maybe space right in front of your business isn’t the critical key to your businesses surviving.”
The DDA is currently conducting a Downtown Area Circulation Study to assess future expansions to the downtown bikeway network. Thomson said a potential focus will be to connect the surrounding neighborhoods with Downtown Ann Arbor.
“One of the components of that study is to look at our current network downtown and look for opportunities to extend out to the neighborhoods to connect to downtown,” Thomson said. “Some of the streets that pop to mind, the Division Street bikeway, could it extend over Broadway Bridge? What we’re looking to do is build on the network that we already have in place downtown.”
Daily Staff Reporter Joshua Nicholson can be reached at joshuni@umich.edu.