Some people say bike lanes will hurt their property values. Others say they’re a sign that long-time residents will soon be pushed out of their homes. But none of those arguments hold up. It seems like bike lane hate is more about fighting change, any change, than fighting bikes.

Photo by Elvert Barnes on Flickr.

People complain that bike lanes will hurt their property values

A lot of opposition to bike infrastructure has stemmed from people’s beliefs that the project will lead to neighborhood decline. Some think that the bike lane will make congestion worse or take away parking, while others may think that the bike lanes are ugly or will invite people who didn’t used to ride through the neighborhood to start hanging around.

Alexandria residents made this argument about proposed bike lanes along a tiny section of King Street in 2013. One resident wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal complaining about the project and the nefarious goals of cyclists nationwide.

“When you see the bike activists in your neighborhood,” he wrote, “be warned that they tend not to play nice. Our local gang misrepresents their number and talks of assembling a ‘critical mass’ of cyclists who will ride together up King Street.” He went on to intimate that bike lanes (and the people who use them) destroys the delicate harmony that people in a neighborhood have worked hard to acheive (mostly by being able to afford nice houses in a nice neighborhood).

In Chevy Chase, one opponent said a building a side path along Wisconsin Avenue would make it so she would “have to move.”

Nationwide, projects in New York and California have prompted cries that new bike lanes would make one’s Jaguar nearly worthless, and that the “visual cacauphony” of bike lanes would ruin home values.

Other people say bike lanes mean gentrification

The latest controversies has the pendulum swinging towards arguments that bike lanes are a sign that long-time residents will soon be unable to afford to live in their homes. In DC, there’s been a big backlash against DDOT’s plan to build a new protected bike lane along 5th, 6th, or 9th Street Northwest, with opponents saying that plan is yet another part of a process aimed at pushing poorer residents out.

In 2010, voters were encouraged to vote against incumbent mayor Adrian Fenty and “bike lanes and dog parks”, with bike lanes being seen as vanity projects compared to issues like jobs or housing costs.

Elsewhere, even in bike friendly Portland, the city had to hold off on plans to build a protected bike lane because residents felt like the neighborhood was changing too quickly. The push against the bike project was one way to slow things down and ensure that the city wasn’t helping speed up the changes (mostly fueled by private investment in real estate) that people felt were leading to displacement.

Bikes, in general, are a common target

Almost any bike related project can elicit the same outcry. Capital Bikeshare ran into trouble in 2010 in places where people thought that the stations would be unsightly.

That was the case around Lincoln Park in Capitol Hill where DDOT at first canceled a planned station because of complaints over the noise and crime a CaBi station would supposedly bring.

Similarly, the National Park serice resisted putting stations on the National Mall, with NPS’ spokesman at the time saying CaBi stations would “destroy” the Mall’s purpose. (NPS eventually let CaBi stations go in on the mall in 2012.)

During that same period, CaBi had to deal with tensions over its rollout, station placement, and membership access to make sure the system wasn’t just seen as a plaything for wealthier residents. In CaBi’s initial rollout, DDOT made sure to put stations in all eight of DC’s wards but was still accused of focusing on certain wealthier neighborhoods to the detriment of others. This despite the fact that efforts at making memberships available to the poor have been ongoing since the program began.

It’s rarely actually about the bike lanes

A bicycling project can’t raise and lower home values at the same time. Across the region, people of all income levels ride bicycles. Also, we know that bike lanes have numerous positive effects. So why do they get so much resistance?

The reason for the opposition usually isn’t tied to bicycling itself. Instead, it’s about fighting to prevent change that might make their neighborhood different from how they think it should be.

Its natural to feel anxious about changes coming to your neighborhood. A person’s home is usually the biggest asset they have, and if they perceive a threat to that, their concern is justified.

The problem is when people to do things that don’t address their actual concerns, and end up harming the neighborhood anyway. That’s when you see people fighting hard against change that benefits neighborhoods, like new stores, new parks, or even new bike lanes.

That people are willing to work against any and all improvements to their neighborhoods is telling of how perverse our country’s housing system really is. Despite initial protests, installing bike lanes almost universally leads to positive outcomes; they make neighborhoods easier for more people to use, and the driving forces of gentrification— too little housing supply, mostly— are there with or without them.