The Conservative Case for Walking and Bicycling

I love cars. At age 16, my first car gave me access to career-building internship opportunities far away from my childhood home. I’ve owned fun sports cars and handy utility vehicles. I’ve driven over 150 MPH on a racetrack, and I love gawking at classic cars at my town’s annual Wheels on Academy car show. This may sound unusual coming from a die-hard pedestrian and bicyclist advocate, but I consider myself in good company. Jeff Speck, renowned author of Walkable City and Walkable City Rules, is also an admitted car buff.¹ I suggest that understanding cars and why people drive them is useful for building popular support for walking and bicycling.

Effecting meaningful change in our local communities requires consensus-building among a diverse population. Advocates cannot limit their coalition to those who can be persuaded by rhetoric that is potentially polarizing. Our neighbors who might be car-lovers and climate-change skeptics can become our allies in the walking and bicycling movement if we take care to understand what motivates them as human beings. Strong Towns² founder and author Charles Marohn provides brilliant insight on bridging political differences in an episode of his podcast³ where he describes how conservatives have higher sensitivities to some issues that progressives care about too, but dedicate less attention. Timothy Carney, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, points out⁴ that many of the values that conservatives hold dear are remarkably well-aligned with the benefits of a traditional walkable and bicycling-friendly community. In a nutshell, a safe and convenient environment for walking and bicycling transportation is family-friendly and economically efficient. But perhaps most importantly, bicycling and walking are rewarding activities enjoyed by many people from across the political spectrum. Traveling under one’s own power may be good for the planet, but it’s fantastic for the individual.

Family Values

So yes, I love cars. What I don’t love is car dependency. I don’t love chauffeuring my kids to and from every after-school activity, job, and social engagement. I don’t love the dangerous barriers that wide, 50 mph thoroughfares create for kids — or many adults — trying to travel without a car. Ask any suburban parent if they worry about the dangers that fast motor traffic poses to their children traveling to the nearest school, store, or library, and they will describe the same fear. We are raising a generation of homebound kids, increasingly isolated and screen-addicted, mitigated only by the time parents can spare to shuttle them to “play dates” and soccer practice.

It wasn’t always this way. Many of us from Generation X and older grew up living close to our everyday destinations in traditional neighborhoods with well-connected, low-speed local street networks that better supported children’s traditional travel modes⁵. Like our parents and grandparents, we lived as Free Range Kids⁶ before there was a name for it. Such independence has an essential role in child development. Walking and bicycling teach kids self-reliance, personal responsibility, adaptability, and resilience — values all parents care about, but which resonate especially with conservatives. Bicycling teaches the value of hard work, be it conquering a big hill, improving one’s fitness, or fixing a flat on a tight tire. Tinkering with bikes builds mechanical skills and confidence that can lead to interest in lucrative vocational trades and engineering careers. Walking and bicycling teach kids that they have the power to make things happen for themselves if they are willing to put in the work.

Economic Efficiency

This summer my 16-year-old twins will join their older siblings as licensed drivers. Exactly how many cars will be clogging our small driveway remains to be seen. I want them to have the opportunity to work whichever summer and after-school jobs they can get, but from an economic perspective, owning a car for driving to a low-wage part-time job makes little sense. According to AAA, the average total cost of car ownership in the USA is over $10,000 a year⁷, and according to AutoBlog, the cheapest cars to own cost over $5000 per year⁸. Assuming 250 workdays per year, the cheapest car translates to about $20 per workday. At a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, one would need to work 2.75 hours a workday just to pay for the ten-minute drive to work.

When we add the work time required to pay for car ownership to the time spent driving to work, we can calculate an effective transport speed. When a five-mile commute is completed in a total ten minutes of driving plus 2.75 hours of working to pay for it, the car’s effective transport speed turns out to be less than walking speed. Only by driving many more miles or earning a much higher wage can the car’s effective transport speed become faster than bicycling speed.

It is unsurprising that many low-wage workers do not own cars, and many will walk or bike to work given reasonable conditions to do so. In a car-dependent environment, the cost of car ownership shrinks the available labor pool and increases the cost of labor. In a community that is friendly to bicycling and walking, the transportation barrier to working is reduced, making it easier for local businesses to secure part-time workers at modest wages. Similarly, many people without cars turn to walking and bicycling to access goods and services. As Timothy Carney describes, people who walk to work are “literally picking themselves up by their boot straps.”⁹ Car dependency increases the cost of making transactions in the local economy. In contrast, good conditions for walking and bicycling are good for business, good for workers, and good for customers.

Building sidewalks, crosswalks, and bicycling-related improvements into the transportation network isn’t free. However, the cost of this traditional transportation infrastructure pales in comparison to the cost of the infrastructure required to support car dependency. Wide, high-speed roads and large parking lots are expensive to build, maintain, and upgrade, while paradoxically limiting the potential value of the properties they serve. Walkable places tend to be more economically productive and higher revenue-generating per acre than car-dependent places. The tax revenue in walkable places more easily pays for the public costs of maintaining urban infrastructure, while many car-dependent places with more miles of public infrastructure and lower land values can have more difficulty covering maintenance costs, putting local governments at risk of insolvency over time.¹⁰

Public mass transit such as rail and bus service is a complex issue beyond the focus of this essay. However, there is one simple fact about mass transit worth mentioning here: Transit can only work if the local street network surrounding the stops is walkable. If walking to and from stops is a bad experience, only the desperate will ride mass transit.

Enjoyment and Health

People who choose to walk, run, and bike for fun and health come from all political persuasions. Walking is the most popular form of exercise in the US; bicycling ranks ahead of golf.¹¹ Whether people walk or bike for enjoyment or transportation, the health benefits are enormous. In communities where people walk as part of their daily travel activities, public health and life expectancy are elevated.¹² The health benefits of bicycling also greatly outweigh the risks of injury; statistically, bicycling increases participants’ disability-adjusted life years many times more than reduction from injuries.¹³ This benefit is amplified where lower traffic speeds and better operational habits improve cycling safety. Compared to sedentary lifestyles, walking and bicycling improve individual health and have the potential to reduce net public health care costs.

Individual Choice

According to a 2023 survey by the National Association of Realtors, most Americans report wanting to live in communities with safe and comfortable conditions for walking to local destinations such shops and parks; most also said they would be willing to pay more to live in a walkable community.¹⁴ A survey by NAOIP (a commercial real estate development association) found that office tenants prefer to work in walkable locations four-to-one over isolated suburban office parks. ¹⁵ Americans also tend to rate bicycling as more enjoyable than driving¹⁶ and often consider bicycle-friendliness when choosing where to live.¹⁷ These findings don’t mean that all or even most Americans want to live in high-density urban areas or give up their cars — there is a wide variety of preference among residents regarding development density, and many believe car use is essential to them. But in both vibrant downtowns and quiet suburbs, buyers and renters are looking for pleasant streets with sidewalks, safe and comfortable conditions for cycling, and land use patterns suitable for traveling without a car for at least some trips. Americans appreciate having the choice to travel without a car in similar numbers to those who appreciate the option to drive one.

Supply and Demand

Many Americans who want to live in walkable, bicycling-friendly communities are unable to, because the supply of such neighborhoods has fallen behind demand. Since the mid twentieth century, car-centric government regulations requiring separation of land uses, dendritic street patterns, and high-speed thoroughfare designs have combined to make most newer developments inconvenient, unpleasant, and/or dangerous to travel on foot or by bicycle. Demand for historic walkable neighborhoods has hastened gentrification and has priced out lower-wealth residents¹⁸, compelling many people without cars to live farther out in lower-demand, higher-supply car-centric suburban areas where rent and home prices are lower but walking and bicycling is more dangerous.¹⁹ This trend has likely contributed²⁰ to pedestrian²¹ and bicyclist fatalities²² in the US reaching all-time highs in the past few years in contrast to a general decline in fatalities for motor vehicle occupants.²³ Where vulnerable, innocent people are being endangered by increasing volumes of high-speed motorists, there is an ethical and moral case to be made for improving the safety of these public ways, and for motorists to have a share in paying for it.

A Non-Partisan Cause

People in communities across the US are advocating to make their surroundings more hospitable to walking and bicycling. Realizing this goal involves a wide range of participants including real estate developers, investors, traffic engineers, city planners, police, educators, and elected officials who have the power to improve the neighborhoods and streets we have now and to build new places better. Quality-of-life improvements that benefit both progressive and conservative residents are low-risk issues for local politicians to support without partisan division. It is important to note that most of the effective policy and market strategies that benefit pedestrians and bicyclists are not particularly anti-car; rather, they restore a more traditional balance of transportation opportunities and priorities that supports walking and bicycling but still preserves safe and practical motor vehicle access.

The policies, designs and tactics necessary to make great communities rely on pragmatism, not ideology. Some solutions require regulatory reform while others require strategic investment of public funds. But many improvements require only subtle changes to existing design standards. For instance, keeping people safe while walking requires limiting motor vehicle speeds in areas of pedestrian activity. The effect of speed limitation on motorist trip times is minimal, however, because walkable activity centers are usually compact, which minimizes the distance drivers must travel within these areas. A street network with a choice of alternate routes around pedestrian centers allows drivers use other roads to travel at higher speeds over longer distances. Meanwhile, a well-connected network of low-speed local streets offers bicyclists and pedestrians safer alternatives to higher speed roads — as long as those local streets ultimately connect with where local people want to go.

Many suburban neighborhoods have been designed to minimize residential street connectivity to eliminate cut-through motor traffic within neighborhoods. This design requires all residents (including drivers, pedestrians and cyclists) ascend the road hierarchy to busy, high-speed, state-maintained thoroughfares to reach everyday destinations like grocery stores and schools. A better solution is to provide residential route connectivity that is passable to bicyclists and pedestrians but diverts through-motorists to non-residential corridors. Where drivers speed through old residential neighborhoods with historic gridded streets, traffic diverters can be added to some intersections to redirect motor traffic to major roads while preserving direct routes for pedestrians and cyclists.²⁴ In new suburbs, short-cut paths can connect cul-de-sac and loop streets into safe, efficient, continuous bike routes at minimal cost.²⁵ Communities that support bicycling and walking don’t have to be more expensive to build and maintain; they just need to be built thoughtfully.

Spreading the Joy

Asking local decision makers along for a walk or a bike ride is a persuasion strategy that many bike/ped advocates find effective. A short and pleasant trip can open people’s eyes to the practicality and enjoyability of walking or cycling, as well as the detailed beauty of their community that cannot be appreciated from behind a windshield. (Not to mention the benefits of making a politician feel like a kid again by way of a bike ride.) Partisan media sometimes falsely casts pedestrian and bicyclist advocates as out-of-touch, radical anti-car zealots who want to take away everyone’s cars and lock them into “15 minute cities.” Engaging with people, bringing them out to see conditions on the ground, and working together on practical solutions can dispel stereotypes and demonstrate the satisfaction that comes from making a community better one street or path at a time. In his podcast, Charles Marohn says that “When bottom-up conservatives work with bottom-up progressives, they find that they need each other.”²⁶ Asking Americans to sacrifice their beloved cars is not a winning political message, but helping them rediscover something they love more can change the world.

Footnotes

1. Jeff Speck, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time (Tenth Anniversary Edition), https://citylights.com/topographies/walkable-city-10th-anniversary-edition/ ↩︎
2. https://www.strongtowns.org/contributors-journal/charles-marohn ↩︎
3. Charles Marohn, “On the Conservative Reaction to 15-Minute Cities,” https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/3/13/conservative-reaction-15-minute-cities ↩︎
4. Timothy Carney, “Children Need Neighborhoods Where They Can Walk and Bike,” The Wall Street Journal, April 19, 2024. https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/children-need-neighborhoods-where-they-can-walk-and-bike-5f3a9b4a – see also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehAMLJGcPbU ; https://www.aei.org/multimedia/the-government-should-fund-more-bike-paths/ ; https://www.aei.org/profile/timothy-p-carney/ ↩︎
5. See Dan Gutierrez’s presentation on the bicyclist behavior spectrum for how different categorizes of bicyclists can be served. ↩︎
6. Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids: How Parents and Teachers Can Let Go and Let Grow, 2nd Edition. https://www.freerangekids.com/book/ ↩︎
7. Brittany Moye, “Annual Cost of New Car Ownership Crosses $10K Mark,” August 11, 2022, AAA, https://newsroom.aaa.com/2022/08/annual-cost-of-new-car-ownership-crosses-10k-mark/ ↩︎
8. Chris Teague, “The cheapest cars to own and operate in 2024,” AutoBlog, February 8, 2024, https://www.autoblog.com/article/cheapest-cars-to-own-and-operate/ ↩︎
9. See footnote 4. ↩︎
10. Charles Marohn, “The Real Reason Your City Has No Money.” https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/12/8/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money ↩︎
11. “Sports and exercise among Americans,” US Bureau of Labor Statistics, August 4, 2016, https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2016/sports-and-exercise-among-americans.htm ↩︎
12. Matthew Bigg, “Car-driven society poses health risk for Americans,” Reuters, May 29, 2009, https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/car-driven-society-poses-health-risk-for-americans-idUSTRE54S002/ ↩︎
13. BMA, 1992 “Cycling towards health and safety.” British Medical Association ISBN 0–19–286151–4.1992. See also Logan, Somers, Baker, Connell, Gray, Kelly, McIntosh, Welsh, Gray, Gill, “Benefits, risks, barriers, and facilitators to cycling: a narrative review,” Front Sports Act Living. September 19, 2023, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10546027/ ↩︎
14. “New NAR Survey Finds Americans Prefer Walkable Communities,” National Association of Realtors, June 27, 2023, https://www.nar.realtor/newsroom/new-nar-survey-finds-americans-prefer-walkable-communities ↩︎
15. Emil Malizia, “Preferred Office Locations,” NAIOP Research Foundation, October 2014, https://www.naiop.org/globalassets/research-and-publications/report/preferred-office-locations-comparing-location-preferences-and-performance-of-office-space-in-cbds-suburban-vibrant-centers-and-suburban-areas/ ↩︎
16. Eli McKnown-Dawson, “How do Americans feel about walking, driving, and other ways they get around?,” YouGov, February 28, 2024, https://today.yougov.com/travel/articles/48782-how-americans-feel-about-walking-driving-and-other-transit ↩︎
17. Clare Trapasso, “Bike Lanes Are Bringing More Millennials to the Suburbs,” July 20, 2016, https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/bike-lanes-bring-millennials-to-suburbs/ ↩︎
18. Joe Cartright, “Walkable places are growing in value almost everywhere,” https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/22/walkable-places-are-growing-in-value – See also https://www.data.indianarealtors.com/reports/stories/walkability-premiumh America, https://smartgrowthamerica.org/dangerous-by-design/ ↩︎
19. “Dangerous by Design 2024,” Smart Growth America, https://smartgrowthamerica.org/dangerous-by-design/ ↩︎
20. Badger, Blatt, Katz, “Why Are So Many American Pedestrians Dying at Night?,” New York Times, December 11, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/11/upshot/nighttime-deaths.html ↩︎
21. Eric Cova, “Pedestrian fatalities at historic high,” Smart Growth America, April 3, 2024, https://smartgrowthamerica.org/pedestrian-fatalities-at-historic-high/ ↩︎
22. Fatality Facts 2022 — Bicyclists,” IIHS, June 2024, https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/bicyclists ↩︎
23. Vibhav Nandagiri, “Pedestrian and bicyclist deaths are up in North Carolina, and public health advocates are calling for change,” NC Health News, June 17, 2024, https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2024/06/17/pedestrian-bike-deaths-up-in-nc-public-health-advocates-calling-for-change/ ↩︎
24. “Traffic Diversion,” Bicycle Safety Guide and Countermeasure Selection System, Federal Highway Administration, http://www.pedbikesafe.org/BIKESAFE/countermeasures_detail.cfm?CM_NUM=29 ↩︎
25. Michel Southworth, Eran Ben-Joseph, “Reconsidering the Cul-de-sac,” Access Magazine, Spring 2004, https://www.accessmagazine.org/spring-2004/reconsidering-cul-de-sac/ ↩︎
26. See footnote 3. ↩︎