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G-1 APPENDIX G RECREATION AND REDUCED AUTO USE BENEFITS The material in this appendix is adapted from a longer report on the benefits of bicycling in Minnesota (224). USER BENEFITS: HEALTH AND RECREATION In general people bicycle because they enjoy the activity and the improved sense of well-being and health that comes from it. There is value in this, although it is not reflected in any monetary transac- tion. An improved bicycling environment will make riding more enjoyable when it is done, and will likely increase the frequency with which it is done; both factors will increase the overall size of this benefit. Our concern here is with the non-monetary benefits derived from user enjoyment of bicycling and its effects, including health. By this we mean simply the greater sense of well-being that comes from being healthy rather than sick. There are also monetary benefits of better health such as reduced medical costs and less missed work; these are discussed later as societal benefits. It is hard to place a value on recreation and on improved health separately. One approach to dealing with both these issues is to treat them jointly. This approach would assume that the individual who chooses to ride a bike derives some personal non-financial benefits from doing so, in terms of better health and general enjoyment, but does not try to disentangle this bundle of benefits into its compo- nents, instead simply comparing the overall size of the bundle to the costs of participating in the activity. For any person who partici- pates in the activity, the bundle of benefits must exceed the time, money, or other costs of participation. Estimates of non-monetary value then reflect this entire bundle rather than any individual com- ponent of it. While there is a monetary cost to owning and maintaining a bike, the apparent cost of any given ride is generally very low. The larger cost of riding is the value of the time that it takes. If one supposes, as is common in transportation work, that the average person values time at about $10/hr, then the typical hour bike ride, including some preparation and cleanup time, must be generating at least $10 in non- monetary benefits to justify the time taken. Since the total benefits must exceed the total costs to justify the activity, the total benefits are certainly higher than this. Three methods for estimating the value of recreational activities and facilities have been informally sanctioned by the federal govern- ment in the form of guidelines for their application. All tend to yield similar results. Perhaps the most relevant for this situation is the âtravel costâ approach. Very briefly, the idea of this is to measure and value the time spent accessing the activity, and to value the net benefits of the activity as being at least this value. That is, the total benefits of participation, minus the costs incurred by participating, must be greater than the cost of accessing the activity in the first place. A person who makes a two-hour round trip to get to a bike trail, at $10 per hour, must place a net value on the bike ride itself of at least $20. A wide variety of studies of outdoor recreational activities (non- bicycling) generated typical values of about $40 per day in 2004 dollars (245). If a typical day of recreation is about 4 hours, this would be about $10/hour. Note that this is an estimate of the net benefits, above and beyond the value of the time taken by the activity itself. This estimate is also in line with a recent study of urban trails in Indianapolis, which used the travel cost method to find typical implied values per trip of about $7 to $20 (246). AUTO SUBSTITUTION BENEFITS This section discusses three categories of benefits related to auto substitution: lower transportation costs for bicyclists, reduced govern- mental and infrastructure costs, and reducing problems associated with automobile use. Although our work leads us to conclude that these benefits are relatively small, we treat them at some length here because they are generally considered to be of great importance in the bicycle advocacy literature. Because of this we felt that it was impor- tant to explain in some depth our reasons for considering these ben- efits to be of only minor significance. The arguments for these benefits, and calculations of their sizes, are summarized in the work of Litman (225); his discussion is generally representative of other work in this area. All of these benefits ulti- mately rely on some assumption of bicycle travel substituting for car travel, with correspondingly reduced costs of some type. There are two broad issues that impact the potential size of benefits from this source. The first is that the fraction of total bicycling that is actually replac- ing a driving trip is probably very small. All sources agree that more than half of all riding is recreational or fitness-oriented; these rides almost certainly are not substituting for a driving trip, and may even be creating extra driving if people drive their bikes somewhere else to ride. Even of those trips that are utilitarian in nature, it could be that the trip would have been made by transit, walking, as a car pas- senger, or not at all if not made by bike. Evidence from the NPTS suggests that of those people who usually commute to work by bike, only about 40% drive on the days that they do not bike; the others use transit, walk, or ride with someone else. The second reason that biking probably does not have much impact on broader transportation problems is that there is so little of it rel- ative to the amount of driving. Total daily miles of travel by bike in a typical city are perhaps 0.25% of daily vehicle miles of travel by cars. This will certainly have no impact on overall infrastructure needs, and it is hard to imagine that it could have much impact on congestion except possibly in a few isolated situations. Lower Transportation Costs for Bicyclists The notion that bicycling reduces transportation costs tends to rely on some combination of two assumptions, each of which is questionable. The first is that a bicycle does not cost very much to
operate compared with a car. The second is that the extra time (not to mention inconvenience) that is needed to make trips by bike rather than car is not really a cost. We address each of these in turn. Litman states that the variable costs of bicycling are 1 cent per mile. These seem low by perhaps a factor of 10 or 20. Parts wear out, or are damaged in crashes. The chain needs to be cleaned and lubricated; the tires need to be inflated. It is impossible to use a bike for 5,000 miles without doing any maintenance on it, as is routinely done with cars. Even if the rider does this work, the time costs of doing it should be counted as a cost of riding. If one rides any significant amount, or uses the bike for utilitarian purposes, then specialized clothing and other equipment will typically also be purchased. A pair of mid-priced tires, as an example, might cost about $50, and might last about 5,000 miles. This is 1 cent per mile, about the per-mile cost of car tires. Spending three minutes every 100 miles or so to inflate the tires is 50 cents worth of time, or 0.5 cents per mile. The chain should be cleaned every 500 miles at least, at a time cost of about $5, or 1 cent per mile. The occasional tube puncture imposes a monetary and time cost. As with cars, more expensive repairs and tune-ups are sometimes necessary. Expensive bike-specific clothing, a near necessity if one rides very much, wears out after a few hundred miles (and must be laundered in the interim). We are not aware that anyone has really tried to systematically determine these costs, but the authorâs personal experience does not lead him to believe that he saves money when he rides a bike rather than driving. Even in terms of fuel, consider that a mile of biking might burn perhaps 50 calories. A dollar would buy roughly somewhere between 100 and 1,000 calories worth of replacement food, depending on the type of food. At 500 calories per dollar, the replacement food is cost- ing 10 cents per mile, a cost that is not really any cheaper than the gas needed to drive a car the same distance. To the possible objection that people enjoy eating but not putting gas in their car, we respond yes, but that benefit is already counted as part of the non-monetary recreational benefits mentioned previously. Here we are talking about monetary costs, and whether it is possible to save money by riding a bike. The overall variable costs of operating a car (the costs that actually go up as the car is driven more) are about 15 to 20 cents per mile depending on the degree of stop and go traffic conditions (226). These costs include fuel, tires, maintenance and repairs, and depreciation. Of these, depreciation is probably the only area where a bike may be cheaper. Overall a bike seems likely to be more expensive for off-peak travel (when cars are cheaper to operate), and even for peak travel the difference seems unlikely to be more than three cents per mile, and likely zero if clothing is included as part of the cost, as we believe it should be. This is substantially less than Litmanâs estimated savings of 11 to 17 cents per mile. A second point concerns the time costs of biking versus driving. While there may be isolated situations of extreme congestion where biking is faster, in general there will be a time penalty to riding a bike rather than driving. While Litman argues that since this time penalty is incurred voluntarily it should not be counted as a cost, we contend that this falls into the same category as food. Litmanâs point is that if someone enjoys riding then the extra time it takes is not really a cost to that person. But again, we are counting this enjoy- ment value as part of the non-monetary recreational benefits. The fact that there is a compensating benefit does not mean that there is not a cost as well. Another possible source of user savings is parking, for those commuters who work in areas where parking fees must be paid. G-2 This is more likely to be an issue in dense areas, and for those com- muters who would drive if they didnât bike. While this could be sub- stantial in some cases, it is location-specific and hence difficult to estimate in a general way. These results are a small fraction of the level that Litman asserts. We believe that the true value is closer to zero, as we are ignoring the extra time costs usually associated with bicycling and probably underestimating the monetary costs. Reduced Governmental and Infrastructure Costs Litman and some advocates argue that bicycling saves costs of roads, parking, and other transportation infrastructure and mainte- nance. These arguments, however, rely on a confusion of fixed and variable costs. Most state and federal roads are more or less fully funded through fuel taxes and other fees, so that any additional costs created by driving are paid for by taxes on driving. In this sense driv- ing does not create a financial burden on government in general. The exception is local streets and roads, which are often paid for by property taxes and hence could be considered to be âsubsidized.â However, philosophically, local streets are paid for by property taxes because their primary purpose is considered to be providing access to property, not transportation (227). A person who rides a bike and never drives still needs streets. In any case, the primary cost of streets in most developed areas is for cleaning, snow plowing, and routine maintenance. None of these things will need to be done with any less frequency if bikes are used instead of cars; indeed, they might be even more important for bikes. The need for maintenance arises primarily from weather, the passage of time, and heavy trucks and other equipment, not from cars. The fact that a certain amount of money is spent each year, and a certain number of miles are driven in cars, does not mean that the amount of money would go down if the number of miles driven did. That is, these costs are largely fixed; riding a bike will not save the government money. Similarly for parking (the governmental or private costs of provid- ing it, not the costs to the user), almost all the cost is the fixed cost of creating the facility in the first place; shifting a trip from car to bike will not change this. In cases where parking is in very short supply, the fact that bicyclists are not taking up spaces may create some con- venience for others who are able to park in areas that would other- wise have been full, but the value of this seems unlikely to be large because so few trips are made by bike compared with cars. One possible exception to this argument would be those cases where costs are incurred to expand streets to alleviate heavy traffic conditions. In this case less traffic could mean eliminating or at least delaying these expenditures. However, as a practical matter, the amount of bike-car replacement is so small that it cannot possibly influence these decisions, even in terms of timing, compared with more important factors such as funding availability, environmental impact issues, and even more significant alternative modes such as transit. Reducing External Problems Associated with Automobile Use A final set of minor benefits are those that have to do with reduc- ing external problems associated with automobile use, primarily congestion and air pollution.
Litman claims, citing a Minnesota study (228), that urban con- gestion costs range from 5 to 30 cents per vehicle mile. However, this study was examining primarily the Twin Cities freeway and major arterial network, in the context of understanding how con- gestion pricing could reduce these costs in part by shifting trips to less congested (but slower) alternate routes. Most of the value of the congestion reduction comes from shifting traffic off of freeways and on to other routes. Once this takes place, the congestion costs are already greatly reduced; further reductions due to shifting from G-3 car to bike are limited. The average congestion costs on the non- freeway streets that bikes can use is more in the range of 0 to 5 cents a vehicle mile; the high end is achieved only in a few especially problematic places. With regard to air pollution, Litman cites sources indicating that average costs of air pollution caused by automobiles are about 5 cents per mile for urban driving and 1 cent per mile for rural (rural emis- sions cause fewer costs because there are fewer people around to be affected by them).
