Lessons from Davis, California

Several of us at the Bike Summit attended a presentation about Davis, California, America’s only Platinum-rated biking city. About 17% of all trips in Davis are by bike. Davis is ideally suited for bicycling – a ten-square mile university town of 65,000 people in Northern California, Davis is flat and compact, with a mild climate.

Yet on top of favorable demographics, much of Davis’ bicycling success comes from dedicated leaders, both elected and unelected. Dave Pelz, the Davis public works director for 25 years, traveled to Europe in the 1950s and brought back ideas about bicycles and started implementing them in the 1960s. The 1966 city council election saw a show-down between pro-bike and anti-bike candidates, and the victory of the pro-bike people set the stage for the future – bike lanes started being installed, and the university campus followed suit by closing the core campus area to cars.

Davis has tied its identity to bicycles, and put its money and laws where its mouth is. The city logo is a high bike, and the Chamber of Commerce’s logo mixes the high bike with an agricultural image. Davis has also invested serious resources for its size – over $10 million over the past ten years in bike facilities. Greenbelt multiuse paths connect neighborhoods off of the main roads, and several connections have been created across Interstate 80, which divides North and South Davis. There are no Davis roads wider than four lanes, and bike air stations are installed around the campus and in some new developments. Davis has also created great bike standards – a standard eight-foot wide bike lane, in comparison to the four-foot standard in California or the six-foot standard in Oregon. The City gave up school buses 15 years ago, meaning many junior high and high school students bike to school.

Bike use shares many similarities to the Netherlands. People mostly use low-end beater bikes rather than high-end bikes because of pervasive bike theft, and have learned to use bike racks for long term parking, especially at the Amtrak station, where many students leave their bikes when traveling home for the weekend.

Because Davis is so different than most cities, there is a learning curve for people who move there. A set of 13 bike traffic circles on the campus, with thousands of bicyclists moving through them, lead to amusement during the first few weeks of new students. Presenters shared a story of a time a fraternity set up bleachers next to the traffic circle to watch new students learning how to deal with high-volume bike traffic circles (through trial and error), while their sister sorority set up a first aid station in the middle of the traffic circle.

A bike shop owner told us of her program where new home purchasers get a $250 gift certificate to her bike shop, $200 of which is funded by the real estate company. This creates a connection to the bike shop, and provides an incentive for new people to purchase bicycles or bike trailers.

One final note: the city’s bike and pedestrian coordinator noted that Davis’ size and population makes it relatively easy to plan in and deal with, and said “I am in awe of my colleagues in Portland.� Amen.