There’s no question that Los Angeles is a car city, but according to a study run by the Los Angeles County Bike Coalition, bicycling is on the rise. As city planning and transportation departments consider how and when to make roadway accommodations for bicycles, it’s important to understand how Angelenos currently feel about the issue. While the number of people riding bikes increases, not all Angelenos are keen to start peddling to work. Further still, many are not happy about sharing the road with bike enthusiasts. Some are actively angry about it, a phenomenon that has been termed, “bikelash.” We set out to uncover how Angelenos feel about sharing city streets with people who ride bikes, and how they feel about getting on a bike themselves. We want to know what images and language resonates with them and what to avoid. We collected 692 web surveys that asked respondents’ opinions and attitudes about biking. Respondents varied in age and ethnicity, included equal numbers of males and females, were parents and non-parents, and came from all over the greater Los Angeles region. We followed up with 29 of these survey respondents and conducted five, two-hour focus groups, which helped us uncover the sources of attitudes and beliefs, and start to identify the types of roads that Angelenos prefer. In these focus groups, we tested six different adcepts - part advertisements, part concepts - to see what messaging might encourage Angelenos to be more supportive of biking infrastructure or get on a bike themselves. We then compared our findings to those from a study conducted in 2011 another done in the cities of San Francisco and Portland in 2011 funded by PeopleForBikes and executed by Wild Alchemy. Our findings demonstrate the ways in which Los Angeles is similarly and dissimilarly experiencing this.

A paradox: beliefs don’t translate to support

Survey responses and focus group discussions both support a curious finding: that Angelenos want the exact thing that bike lanes aim to create - an organized and predictable street for all road users - but do not recognize the positive effects of bike lanes on their streets. First, we found that 79% of Angelenos believe that people who ride bikes deserve the same access to roads as people who drive cars, and 78% believe that government should work to make biking safer for everyone. However, support dropped to 62% when we suggested that bike lanes should be added to more city streets.

           

BikeLash to BikeLove A study of attitudes toward cycling in Los Angeles by Coro Fellows Nella McOsker and Ellen Riotto

Bike lanes should be added to more streets

 

Both drivers and cyclists deserve access to public roads

 

Government should make biking safer for everyone

 

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 People believe that biking should be a safe, viable option for those who are interested, but as soon as the theoretical becomes more tangible, we see hesitancy where there used to be support. We see another disconnect in people’s attitudes about the effects of bike lanes on their driving experience. First, we asked survey respondents whether they agree with the statement, “Bike lanes make city streets more organized” and saw that 55% of people either strongly agree or agree. Support, though, did not extend to the statement, “Streets with bike lanes are better to drive a car on,” where we see only 37% support. Transportation specialists might argue that the purpose (and oftentimes, the outcome) of biking infrastructure is to create a more organized street for all street users. And yet, many drivers are not making the association with biking infrastructure and a better experience behind the wheel of a car.

  So where is this breakdown happening? How could communication around biking infrastructure change to successfully convince people that organization (which they admit is a result of bike lanes) applies to all road users and leads to a better driving experience as well as biking experience?

Words with positive and negative associations with biking in Los Angeles

In our survey, we asked respondents to read a list of 70 words and choose the five words that they felt most positively and negatively about in relationship to biking on their city’s streets. The most frequently chosen positive words were: environment, bike path, cost-effective, transportation, and getting around. While Portland and San Francisco had safe and practical high on their list of top positive words, safe was found within the top ten negative words for Los Angeles.

                 

Bike lanes make streets more organized

 

Streets with bike lanes are better to drive a car on

 

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This preference for bollards was confirmed in our Los Angeles study. We asked focus group participants to rank five different types of protected bike lanes (parked car, planters, armadillos, bollards, and curb) on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 was the most desirable street to be on and 5 was the least desirable. Bollards were the second-most preferred type of protected bike lane, with 64% (18 out of 28 participants) ranking it as their first or second preferred street. The Los Angeles study confirmed a preference toward bollards as a form of protected bike lane.

Traffic was the top ranked negative word in both studies, and there was a common theme among the other highly ranked negative words: exclusive, inevitable, separated, and preferential, which all imply privilege for cyclists in a way that respondents clearly did not like.

 It seems that traffic is a trigger word that should be avoided in messaging around biking infrastructure, as well as any suggestion that cyclists are receiving preferential treatment. Los Angeles may be more keen on cost-effective messaging than San Francisco or Portland, though there is a trend across all regions that environment and bike paths elicit more positive reactions. Angelenos do not positively associate safe with biking.

Angelenos don’t feel safe Where we see the most stark difference in results between the two studies is when we look at attitudes toward safety. In the Portland and San Francisco study, participants’ perceptions of safety increased with their frequency of riding a bike. In other words, get a San Franciscan or Portlander on a bike and they will feel safer about biking. In Los Angeles, we see the opposite effect. When asked to rate on a scale of one to five their level of concern about their own safety when deciding whether or not to ride a bike, the lowest rate of concern came from those Angelenos who do not own a bike and have no interest in biking. Concern for safety increased with respondents’ biking habits. One possible explanation is that San Francisco and Portland have the biking infrastructure to support a person who decides to ride a bike, whereas Los Angeles is still building.

Bollards are a desirable form of protected bike lane

The study conducted in San Francisco and Portland asked respondents to rate their emotional responses to streets with bike lanes. Of these varied images, the ones showing bike lanes protected by bollards performed the best.                

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Angelenos are ready to use their bikes for short, local trips

We’re taking a few lessons from the findings of this study:

1. There is work to be done to communicate to Angelenos that biking infrastructure indeed organizes a street, as well as makes streets better to drive a car on.

2. In some cases, it might be a matter of finding the right words in public messaging, and there are some specific words that create positive and negative reactions to biking in Los Angeles.

3. Angelenos do not associate biking with safety, and this may be a matter of actually making biking safe in Los Angeles rather than a messaging problem.

4. People seem to prefer bollards as a particular type of protected bike lane. 5. An effective strategy to getting an inexperienced rider on a bike is to have them experience the fun and ease

of taking their bike on a short, local trip instead of their car. Angelenos are expressing a desire to do this.  

One of the patterns we found across our five focus groups was an agreement with the adcept “Get Around without the Hassle” which featured a farmer’s market scene and the copy “Biking is more efficient for short, local trips.” This slide prompted a lively conversation in each group about the convenience of using a bicycle within a certain distance from your home as opposed to getting in the car and dealing with the hassle of parking, all for a quick errand. Many participants verbalized that they do not use their bike for short trips enough, and that they should do it more.

“This is a good way to start someone on

riding a bike, it’s more realistic.”

 

Giving people the opportunity to try using a bicycle to get around their neighborhood is exactly the mission of an LA-based organization called CicLAvia. Founded in 2008, CicLAvia collaborates with the city and local businesses to close streets to cars and create an environment that encourages non-riders to get on a bicycle. As one focus group participant suggested, this idea of using a bike for short, local trips is a realistic, small-step approach to increase ridership in the city. In addition to providing the space for people to practice riding, targeted messaging around “short, local trips” might be an effective way to garner greater support.

For more information Ellen Riotto / coro.riotto@gmail.com

Nella McOsker / coro.mcosker@gmail.com

Coro is a nine-month fellowship in public affairs, examining how sectors operate and can work

together effectively to create change. http://www.corola.org/

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