Last winter I wrote about a report that found construction of bike lanes and paths in Baltimore created more jobs per $1 million than road construction.
The author of that report, Heidi Gerrett-Peltier, has expanded her research to 58 projects in 11 cities, including Seattle, and found that her original findings hold true.
“Bicycling infrastructure creates the most jobs for a given level of
spending,” she writes in Pedestrian and Bicycle Infrastructure: A National Study of Employment Impacts.
The report compares job creation for road construction and rehabilitation, building new multi-use trails, widening roads to include bikes lanes, and construction of sidewalks.
For each $1 million spent, the bicycle projects created 11.4 jobs within the state where the project was located. Pedestrian-only jobs create 10 jobs, multi-use trails create 9.6 jobs, and road-only projects create 7.8 jobs per $1 million spent.
The report, issued by the Political Economy Research Institute, concludes:
or not to include pedestrian and/or bicycle facilities in transportation
infrastructure projects, planning officials should do so, not only
because of the environmental, safety, and health benefits but also
because these projects can create local jobs.”
Labor
A lot of the difference in jobs creation between big highway projects and bike lane installations boils down to labor intensity. A higher proportion of spending for bike and pedestrians projects goes to paying construction workers and engineers, while the cost for road-only projects goes to materials like asphalt and cement.
The report also cites other benefits of bicycle transportation — better air quality, improved health, less traffic congestion, as well as the economic benefits of tourism.
Cities
The cities used in the study were, Anchorage, Austin, Baltimore, Bloomington (IN), Concord (NH), Eugene (OR), Houston, Lexington (KY), Madison (WI), Santa Cruz and Seattle.
The results, by city, did vary. In Anchorage, for instance, road-only construction created 11.6 jobs per $1 million, while road infrastructure with bike and pedestrian facilities created only 6.6 job. That's just about opposite of anywhere else.
The Seattle experience was more consistent with the national trend. Off-street multi-use trails created 10.4 jobs per $1 million, road infrastructure with bike and pedestrian facilities created 8.3 jobs, and road-only work created 8.5 jobs per $1 million.
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