When New York Municipality proposed installing a protected velocipede lane on Skillman Thoroughfare in Queens in 2017, the impact it would have on local businesses was unrepealable — at least equal to the plan’s critics.

A devastating loss of customers. Revenue falling by 20 percent. Beloved shops forced to tropical their doors for good.

Those predictions were wrong.

Data obtained by Streetsblog through a Freedom of Information request shows the economy of Skillman Thoroughfare grew without the municipality built the new lane in the fall of 2018, with revenue increasing and new businesses setting up shop.

Sales in the stores, bars and restaurants on Skillman’s main seven-block commercial stretch collectively rose by 12 percent without the lane went in, equal to the data, which was provided by the municipality Department of Finance. There was moreover a net increase of three new businesses on the strip, a jump of 10 percent.

Today the main stilt of the western Queens neighborhood is as lively as ever, with restaurants, bars, bodegas, and other mom-and-pop establishments doing brisk business. Some locals credit the new velocipede lane.

“It definitely helps,” said Mark O’Dowd, the manager of the P.J. Horgan’s bar on Skillman. “People waif their bikes here, they pop in for a beer.”

Streetsblog’s findings uncurl with a growing soul of research — including an oft-cited but nearly decade-old study by the municipality Department of Transportation — showing that so-called zippy transportation infrastructure has a neutral or positive impact on local commerce. The data moreover rencontre one of the most frequent arguments versus new velocipede lanes — that they’ll hurt neighboring businesses — an treatise that continues to surface in new disputes as the DOT endeavors to fulfill a legal requirement to build 30 miles of protected velocipede lanes each year.

For one opponent of the Skillman velocipede lane, Streetsblog’s findings prompted a reconsideration of once firmly held beliefs.

“You’ve got to go with what the data tells you,” said Brent O’Leary, a local polity leader who once argued that the lane had been a “real burden” on small businesses.

“If it shows that that wasn’t the specimen then I wouldn’t fight it,” O’Leary said in an interview this month. “If there’s good data I will unchangingly transpiration my position.”

The municipality first proposed towers the Skillman Thoroughfare velocipede lane — and flipside on parallel 43rd Thoroughfare — in the fall of 2017 without drivers killed one cyclist and critically injured flipside in the area. The mortality sparked an outcry from unscratched streets advocates, the neighborhood’s then-Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer, and the family of Gelacio Reyes, the man who was killed. The DOT then ripened a plan to redesign the streets with largest sight lines at intersections, new pedestrian islands, reconfigured traffic lanes and, yes, protected velocipede lanes.

The saltate was extreme. Civic groups rallied versus the proposal. Opponents packed community meetings that lasted hours. Van Bramer waffled on his position. A cyclist found thumb tacks scattered withal four blocks of the new velocipede lane on 43rd Avenue.

Throughout the protracted dispute, opponents then and then made the same assertion: removing parking on Skillman to make way for street-safety features would hurt local merchants.

“They’re basically telling us they can’t protract doing merchantry if they lose all that parking,” Denise Keehan-Smith, who chaired the local polity workbench at the time, said in 2017.

“Protected velocipede lanes do not guarantee safer streets, but it will midpoint a loss of business,” Gary O’Neill, owner of the Aubergine Cafe on Skillman, said a few months later.

“Some of the stores have once said, at the end of August, they may not be worldly-wise to last considering the businesses have clients and cars,” said Pat Dorfman, the throne of an anti-bike-lane group.

The dire economic assumptions plane factored into then-Rep. Joe Crowley’s opposition to the plan.

“Adding these velocipede lanes would have far too unconfined of an economic forfeit and impact on our neighborhood,” he wrote in a statement.

Four years later, those grim predictions have not come to pass. Streetsblog’s wringer revealed:

• In the spring of 2017, increasingly than a year surpassing the velocipede lane was installed, there were 31 retail or supplies service merchantry that collectively made $3.11 million in taxable sales that quarter on Skillman Thoroughfare between 45th and 52nd streets. By early 2020, there were 34 businesses that collectively made $3.47 million in the quarter.
• By some measures, Skillman outperformed its surroundings. Streetsblog moreover obtained sales tax data from the same period for Queens as a whole and for a nearby stretch of Greenpoint Thoroughfare that is similar in weft to Skillman Thoroughfare but has no protected velocipede lane. While new businesses were opening on Skillman Avenue, they were latter on Greenpoint Avenue, which lost a net of two businesses over the same period. Queens moreover lost businesses.
• Skillman’s 12-percent increase in joint quarterly sales was greater than the increase in Queens as a whole (3 percent).

By other measures, Skillman performed worse than its surroundings. The increase in joint quarterly sales was plane greater on Greenpoint Thoroughfare (16 percent) than on Skillman (12 percent). And Greenpoint Thoroughfare and Queens enjoyed larger increases in quarterly sales when measured on a per-business basis. Each merchantry on Skillman saw on stereotype a $1,700 (2 percent) quarterly increase in sales, while the increase was $6,600 (6 percent) per merchantry in Queens as a whole and $19,400 (20 percent) per merchantry on Greenpoint Avenue.

As for street safety, other municipality data shows the dangers on Skillman dropped dramatically on stereotype for all road users without the velocipede lane was installed  — much as DOT said it would. Crashes on the thoroughfare fell by 24 percent — and injuries from crashes by 28 percent — in the two years without the velocipede lane went in compared to the two years prior.

Meanwhile, on Greenpoint Avenue, crashes increased by 8 percent and injuries by 41 percent in that same period.

The Department of Transportation praised the developments on Skillman.

“The success of the Skillman Thoroughfare protected velocipede lane shows the positive impact of street diamond improvements,” organ spokeswoman Mona Bruno said in a statement. “It’s thrilling to see the neighborhood flourish with safer and increasingly sustainable streets.”

But plane the rosy economic data was not unbearable to dissuade some former foes of the velocipede lane that it may not have been so bad without all.

Keehan-Smith, the former Polity Workbench 2 chair who voted versus the project, said she does not know whether she would vote differently today, plane with the data showing merchantry grew on the street pursuit the lane’s construction.

Merchants at the time told her the lane would hurt their business, she said, “and so whatever they told me, I believed them.”

Danny Zhang, the owner of T.J. Asian Bistro on Skillman, was one such merchant, saying in March 2019 that merchantry dropped by 20 percent without the lane was installed — a icon he repeated in an interview older this month.

“For me, it really hurt,” he said of the velocipede lane. “Business is getting slower.”

Zhang was incredulous well-nigh the municipality data showing an overall increase in sales on the street since the lane went in. He said customers used to momentum to his restaurant from Astoria and Jackson Heights, but they no longer do considering they can’t find parking.

Zhang drives to the restaurant from his home on Long Island.

O’Neill and Dorfman did not respond to multiple requests to comment.

Streetsblog’s findings resonate with prior research on the subject. In 2013, DOT released its study on the economic impact of velocipede lanes and other street redesign projects on neighboring businesses in the municipality and found that “improved serviceability and a increasingly welcoming street environment created by these projects generate increases in retail sales in the project areas.”

And Jenny H. Liu, an economist at Portland State University who researches the issue, says study without study has reaffirmed the finding that velocipede lanes typically have a neutral to positive impact on nearby businesses.

“Walk-able and bike-able neighborhoods and commercial areas tend to vamp a lot increasingly foot traffic,” she said. Pedestrians and cyclists tend to patronize businesses increasingly commonly than drivers, she added, and in the long run they tend to spend more, too.

Liu cautioned that the data obtained by Streetsblog does not indicate whether the Skillman velocipede lane directly helped or hurt neighboring businesses — only that the street’s economy grew without the lane was installed. To determine any causal connection, she said, other factors must be considered, including inflation, changes in employment and wages on the street, changes in the types of businesses opening and latter and any large investments in the area.

Still, the findings provided yet increasingly vestige that the economic treatise versus velocipede lanes is flimsy — not that it’s likely to disappear from future velocipede lane battles.

“Most people who fight this stuff are vastitude facts and to some stratum are participating in a culture war,” said Orcutt, the sponsorship director of Velocipede New York and a former DOT official. “They need to be defeated, not convinced. And it’s really up to [DOT] Commissioner [Ydanis] Rodriguez and the mayor to lead on that, not to stick a finger in the wind and listen to people saying stuff that’s not factual.”

ABOUT THIS STORY

This story is based on Streetsblog’s analysis of sales tax data obtained from the New York Municipality Department of Finance through a Freedom of Information request. DOF received the data from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance and aggregated it by study zone to preserve the tax secrecy of individual businesses.

The Department of Finance charged Streetsblog $1,700 to provide the data, saying it took the organ 35 hours to prepare. While the New York State Freedom of Information Law allows agencies to tuition for the production of records, Rachael Fauss, a senior policy counselor for the good-government group Reinvent Albany, criticized DOF’s visualization to tuition Streetsblog $1,700.

“The increasingly that records are inaccessible due to fees, the increasingly it defeats the purpose of the Freedom of Information Law,” she said. “These are the public’s records, and getting charged for them is counter to public access.”

The Department of Finance’s yearly upkeep is greater than $300 million. Streetsblog is a non-profit newsroom with five full-time staff members.

Jacqueline Gold, a spokeswoman for the Department of Finance, did not respond to a request to scuttlebutt on her agency’s visualization to tuition Streetsblog $1,700 for the data.

The study areas were: Skillman Thoroughfare from 45th Street to 52nd Street, Greenpoint Thoroughfare from 41st Street to 48th Street, and Queens as a whole. The study period was from the first quarter of sales tax year 2018 (March 2017 through May 2017) to the fourth quarter of sales tax year 2020 (December 2019 through February 2020). The velocipede lane was installed between August and October 2018.

The businesses included in the data fall into two North American Industry Classification System categories: Retail Trade (NAICS 44-45) and Walk-up and Supplies Services (NAICS 72).

DOF excluded the top one percent of businesses in Queens based on taxable sales per sale tax year so that outliers would not skew the results. 

Despite Streetsblog’s request, DOF did not exclude businesses located on upper stories of buildings.

Some businesses may file taxes at an write other than a given place of merchantry (e.g. businesses with multiple locations). For that reason, the data provided by DOF may not include all retail, accommodation, and supplies service businesses located in the study areas, and it may inadvertently include businesses registered to the study areas but operating elsewhere.

To identify businesses in the study areas, DOF had to convert the addresses on sales tax returns into their borough-block-lot codes. Considering of issues with the data, DOF said it could not convert roughly 30 percent of merchantry addresses in the city.

DOF could not estimate the number of businesses inadvertently excluded from or included in the data it provided due to the limitations described above.