Monday, February 7, 2011

Add Job Creation to the Many Benefits of Bicycle and Pedestrian Infrastructure

New research from the Policy Economy Research Institute reveals that pedestrian and bicycle projects, including repairing footways and painting bike lanes, can create nearly twice as many jobs per dollar spent than typical road projects (click here for report). In a case study of Baltimore, the report finds that for every $1 million spent, pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure projects were shown to create eleven to fourteen jobs, while "road infrastructure projects" only created seven jobs for every $1 million spent. This is because bicycle and pedestrian projects are more labor intensive, so a greater portion of money spent is spent paying workers than for materials. Typical road projects spend a greater portion on materials.

1 comment:

Mike said...

This just makes sense to me. You create more jobs while creating a better infrastructure.