Businesses in Portland and around the country sometimes push back against bike and pedestrian projects because they think removing space from cars will hurt their businesses. Customers who bike, walk, or take transit to bars, restaurants, and markets are a drop in the bucket, right?
A new study shows that people who walk and bike are actually more valuable as customers to bars, restaurants, and convenience stores, spending more per person each month than people who walk, drive, or take transit to the establishments. Meanwhile, for supermarkets, people who arrive by car are the most valuable customers.
Portland State University civil engineering professor Kelly Clifton presented her super interesting report at city hall yesterday. She and some assistants spent five months interviewing Portlanders at local supermarkets, convenience stores, bars, and restaurants, about how they got to their destination, how much they spent, and some other details.
Over the course of a month, Professor Clifton found, people who bike to restaurants, bars, and convenience stores spend more money than people who arrive via car, transit, or their own two feet. This doesn’t mean that those businesses make the majority of their money off cyclists—in many cases, most customers still arrive by car. But the ones who go out by bike often spend more money per person over time.
Why do cyclists spend more? Well, the study points out a couple key factors that determine how much cash people drop when they’re out. For bars and restaurants, having kids at home means someone will likely spend $4 less at the bar per trip, for example, while they’ll spend about $1 more for every $10,000 in income they make (also, strangely, if it’s a Mexican restaurant, people will spend more money than at anywhere else). If they’re there with a large group, they’ll spend more; if they’re a regular who stops by a few times a week, they’ll spend less. But it could be that people who don’t own cars have more disposable income to spend on tacos and beer since we’re not shelling out $5,000 a year in car upkeep.
They study also points out some crucial infrastructure factors that influence how many customers arrive to bars, convenience stores, and restaurants by bike. Installing a bike corral increases the number of biking customers by six percent. Every mile a business is away from a low-traffic bike-friendly street decreases number of its biking customers by 5.5 percent.
The picture is different at supermarkets. People spend way more than four times as much money at supermarkets every month than they do at bars, restaurants, or corner stores, and buying all your food by foot, bike, or bus poses the obvious challenge of needing to haul your purchases home. People do drive to the market spend significantly more money there over the course of a month than people who get to the store by any other mode (roughly $440 for car-drivers compared to $300 per month for transit riders).
But it’s important to understand that the study doesn’t show that people’s mode of travel is the reason why they spend less or more at any place. People who bike to bars don’t necessarily spend more money there because they biked, it could have to do with the demographics of who’s biking.
When researchers control for income—meaning, looking at how people spend money regardless of how much money they make—different patterns emerge. Regardless of income, people who walk to bars and restaurants spend more money on every visit than any other customers, people who walk or take transit to convenience stores spend less money per trip, and people who bike or walk to the supermarket spend more money per trip.
Folks arriving in a car are a lot more likely to have family members in tow (and family members in general) than folks arriving by bus or bike. How does the study account for number of mouths being fed, especially on the groceries?
That’s because they go to the market less often.
Pointless.
WHO THE FUCK CARES? It is a bike. It will not offer you salvation. It will not give you a personality. It will not stop global warning. It will not get you friends. It is a fucking bicycle. Like the one you had when you were six. Can we please stop talking about bikes?
Michael, the descriptive models are on page 27 of the report (sorry if that’s the most boring kickoff to an online comment ever). The “Person Size of Purchase” model translates to: every extra person the purchaser is buying for (i.e. parent buying for 2 kids), the spending increases 29% (i.e. 58%). So people buy less by bike but then the same person may return the next week in a car and buy more for the family. I don’t think this report was able to dig deeper than that. Most people do a bit of everything, as you know, depending on context (most boring end to an online comment).
When I go to the store I think I can fit a wee bit more in my car than my bike.
I think this article is implying that cyclists are a bunch of drunks.
i am way more likely to spend more money at a bar if i arrived by bike or foot — doing so allows me to not have to worry about being one of those assholes who drive drunkenly…..(although i understand that i can earn myself a DWI whilst riding a bicycle, too, which would be just my luck.)
The word “bike” is only mentioned 12 times, and there’s not a single quote from Maus. Smirk is slipping. Won’t someone think of the children?
@D, the graph in the post combines the frequency of visits with the amount spent per visit. People biking and walking make more trips to stores, bars, and restaurants than drivers, but they often spend less there on each visit.
I thought the average ‘Merikan spent more like $8k / year on their car? At any rate, and as you pointed out before, that is a lot of extra $$$ to drop at Bamboo Sushi, or Bikebar, or whatever place is close to home and polishes your fancy.
Other economic studies have suggested that for every $ in bike infrastructure, the local community makes more back, while car infrastructure gets flushed out to global corps that would love to see PDX wiped from the map with all our socialism and shit.
@Blabby – I’m sorry you never learned to ride a bike. But this is Portland, you could probably even find some hott and scantily clad dude or lady to teach you so you wouldn’t have to harbor such a grudge? Cause bikes actually have a whole host of benefits for individuals and society, from health outcomes (makes your mustache grow bigger!) to congestion and economic security. Live a little!
Wow people buy food; that’s fucking brilliant. This is unbelievably stupid.
It’s a conveyance. Nothing more, nothing less.
Does that $5000-ish figure exclude the costs of maintenance and accidents?
Jake…pretty much, but I am stunned you haven’t been bombarded by seven hundred postings
@GeezRilly and @Reid – That $5000 is Portland-specific, using AAA numbers on average gas and maintenance cost per mile, insurance, depreciation, financing, and registration costs. It doesn’t include parking costs.
I’d like to second jake’s comments. I have seen other cities in the word where biking is part of the transportation scene. Portland seems to be stuck on wanting it to just be a status scene.
If Portland could get their act together and focus more on biking as a practical mode of transportation rather than something to be seen cool doing, it might appeal to more people.