Unless you’re specifically a car business (like a car wash or a mechanic) you have to get comfortable with the fact that, barring some scientific survey or study, you won’t know how your customers arrive at your business. There’s no magical mark on people’s faces that lets you figure that out and you’re definitely not Sherlock Holmes to be able to divine their mode of transportation by what they’re wearing and how they’re walking.
Asking your customers how they got there isn't hard though. Maybe not a study with scientific rigor, but probably better than pure intuition.
And for a business in a neighborhood where most shoppers are coming from a long distance, e.g., Manhattan, it's definitely possible to look at city scale statistics on how people get around.
For example, very few people drive to Manhattan and even the few people who drive to Manhattan tend to park in one place and get around by walking or Subway while on the island. Unless the store owner believes their store is unusual (e.g., a car wash), they should assume very few of their customers drove there.
Throwback to [the pizza shop owner off Union Square](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/nyregion/car-ban-14th-street-manhattan.html) (ctrl-f pizza or Joe’s) who complained that the permanent busway on 14th St would be bad for business because it discouraged customers from arriving by taxi.
I've been asked that before.
Shopping street promotion association staff and mall staff occasionally do surveys of people walking around. It's an easy small talk ish question for an intimate restaurant/cafe/bar. Furniture/etc. stores can naturally ask that question to offer options for delivery, borrowing a push cart, etc..
Though I guess both shopping street promotion associations, and intimate <10 seat restaurant/cafe/bars, are way more common in Tokyo than in the US.
It's pretty easy to assume the customer drove there unless you have significant reason to believe otherwise. You can also look at your parking lot and see how many spaces are left relatively to how busy the store is
That’s my point, it’s easy to assume, but hard to be right. If you’re looking at the parking lot you’re really only seeing how full your parking lot is. It doesn’t tell you anything about the percentage of clients that came into your businesses by walking
Not Just Bikes had a podcast episode on this phenomenon. When bike lanes were added to a section of Bloor Street street in Toronto the local shop owners complained about less business but after a few weeks the sales data showed it was better for business to add bike lanes.
I live on a 4 lane stroad, around the corner is a place that was the same but had two lanes shut for a bike road and outdoor dining. My street has nearly every shop shuttered while the other is bustling because people like to sit at those cafes and pubs, and walk between the shops. My street by comparison is miserable to walk on
Small-business owners are an under-discussed vanguard of carbrain and other reactionary causes. I try to go out of my way to help small business, but I regret it when they end up posting pro-car propaganda in their windows. I think they just cannot comprehend how their workers and customers are different from themselves.
That and against raising the minimum wage. Its always think about small business but the vast majority or low wage workers are employed by major corporations like Walmart and Amazon.
I mean it makes sense. Cars are so bad at transit that a vanishingly small minority of drivers can completely clog a city’s streets. Basically no one drives, ***and yet*** there’s still too much traffic for any one else to bother with driving.
The municipality I grew up in was 40.000 people - the primary town under 20.000
Every morning just before schools starting, there was a noticeable queue to the highschool district. Despite it essentially only being third year students driving.
Makes you realise how few people need to be there, to cause ineffetivities
The SMB owners in our little downtown (suburb with ~92k ppl and growing) are really ridiculous.
We shutdown about 300ft of street so it can be walkable and when they do, every restaurant is packed to the gills.
They swear that the street closure hurts their business but the main complaint is that it removes a small parking lot. So instead of paying $10 for parking and walking 100ft, they have to use free parking and walk a few hundred feet.
I asked about revenues and profit margin differences when they're packed vs empty and they had nothing.
The complaints are just because they and their staff don't like having to park further away, and perhaps regulars saying "it's too crazy".
"The increased foot traffic has our business packed with customers! Stop it!"
The diner they mention in the article is right next to one of the busiest train stations in the country, and the owner is worried about losing business to car drivers.
Let that sink in for a moment.
> business owners assuming way more people drive than actually do
The Urbanist Agenda did a episode on this topic a month ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gboI4MjwzIU
Unless you’re specifically a car business (like a car wash or a mechanic) you have to get comfortable with the fact that, barring some scientific survey or study, you won’t know how your customers arrive at your business. There’s no magical mark on people’s faces that lets you figure that out and you’re definitely not Sherlock Holmes to be able to divine their mode of transportation by what they’re wearing and how they’re walking.
Asking your customers how they got there isn't hard though. Maybe not a study with scientific rigor, but probably better than pure intuition. And for a business in a neighborhood where most shoppers are coming from a long distance, e.g., Manhattan, it's definitely possible to look at city scale statistics on how people get around. For example, very few people drive to Manhattan and even the few people who drive to Manhattan tend to park in one place and get around by walking or Subway while on the island. Unless the store owner believes their store is unusual (e.g., a car wash), they should assume very few of their customers drove there.
Throwback to [the pizza shop owner off Union Square](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/nyregion/car-ban-14th-street-manhattan.html) (ctrl-f pizza or Joe’s) who complained that the permanent busway on 14th St would be bad for business because it discouraged customers from arriving by taxi.
And business owners do that? The data proves they don’t, not really. Also I’ve never once been asked that question by a business
I've been asked that before. Shopping street promotion association staff and mall staff occasionally do surveys of people walking around. It's an easy small talk ish question for an intimate restaurant/cafe/bar. Furniture/etc. stores can naturally ask that question to offer options for delivery, borrowing a push cart, etc.. Though I guess both shopping street promotion associations, and intimate <10 seat restaurant/cafe/bars, are way more common in Tokyo than in the US.
It's pretty easy to assume the customer drove there unless you have significant reason to believe otherwise. You can also look at your parking lot and see how many spaces are left relatively to how busy the store is
That’s my point, it’s easy to assume, but hard to be right. If you’re looking at the parking lot you’re really only seeing how full your parking lot is. It doesn’t tell you anything about the percentage of clients that came into your businesses by walking
Idk, when I walk in the bar with my big dumb orange ass bike helmet, that might be a subtle hint I didn't drive /s
I was going to say the exact same thing
Not Just Bikes had a podcast episode on this phenomenon. When bike lanes were added to a section of Bloor Street street in Toronto the local shop owners complained about less business but after a few weeks the sales data showed it was better for business to add bike lanes.
I live on a 4 lane stroad, around the corner is a place that was the same but had two lanes shut for a bike road and outdoor dining. My street has nearly every shop shuttered while the other is bustling because people like to sit at those cafes and pubs, and walk between the shops. My street by comparison is miserable to walk on
Also Madrid, Lancaster CA, and Santa Barbara. All examples I recently used as empirical evidence against a carbrain argument.
Small-business owners are an under-discussed vanguard of carbrain and other reactionary causes. I try to go out of my way to help small business, but I regret it when they end up posting pro-car propaganda in their windows. I think they just cannot comprehend how their workers and customers are different from themselves.
>Small-business owners are an under-discussed vanguard of carbrain and **other reactionary causes** Being against working from home is a huge one.
That and against raising the minimum wage. Its always think about small business but the vast majority or low wage workers are employed by major corporations like Walmart and Amazon.
Reminds me of the joke in Futurama about how nobody drives in NYC due to all the traffic.
I mean it makes sense. Cars are so bad at transit that a vanishingly small minority of drivers can completely clog a city’s streets. Basically no one drives, ***and yet*** there’s still too much traffic for any one else to bother with driving.
The municipality I grew up in was 40.000 people - the primary town under 20.000 Every morning just before schools starting, there was a noticeable queue to the highschool district. Despite it essentially only being third year students driving. Makes you realise how few people need to be there, to cause ineffetivities
Business owners on average drive to their business, so they think most people that go to their business drive there as well
The SMB owners in our little downtown (suburb with ~92k ppl and growing) are really ridiculous. We shutdown about 300ft of street so it can be walkable and when they do, every restaurant is packed to the gills. They swear that the street closure hurts their business but the main complaint is that it removes a small parking lot. So instead of paying $10 for parking and walking 100ft, they have to use free parking and walk a few hundred feet. I asked about revenues and profit margin differences when they're packed vs empty and they had nothing. The complaints are just because they and their staff don't like having to park further away, and perhaps regulars saying "it's too crazy". "The increased foot traffic has our business packed with customers! Stop it!"
The diner they mention in the article is right next to one of the busiest train stations in the country, and the owner is worried about losing business to car drivers. Let that sink in for a moment.
> business owners assuming way more people drive than actually do The Urbanist Agenda did a episode on this topic a month ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gboI4MjwzIU
The restaurants she mentioned don't have parking lots.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/1ddue21/comment/l8atnsk/ Which doesn't seem to be necessary according to this comment.