Ann Arbor Considers Bike Lane Blocking ‘Bounty’

Ann Arbor, Michigan is the latest city to consider a proposed ‘bounty’ for citizens who report blocked bike lanes, reports Ryan Stanton for MLive. The policy, which would award people who submit a report of a blocked bike lane a percentage of the resulting citation revenue, has also been proposed in New York City and Austin, Texas. 

Some Ann Arbor city council members argue the policy would be unfair to delivery workers and other “folks just trying to work” who are the victims of “Planning failures like not requiring drop-off areas for deliveries, creating protected bike lanes without meaningful public input or proper notice of affected property owners, requiring zero setbacks and doing away with parking minimums”—a not-so-tacit admission of the city’s role in creating the problem. City Council Member Erica Briggs, D-5th Ward, says “Solving the problem requires engineering, education and enforcement solutions.”

A recent proposal from Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine would take a different approach in New York that would begin to address infrastructure shortfalls, as another article on Spectrum News 1 describes. “Under that proposal, delivery workers would have access to parking garages to unload and sort packages, some deliveries would be made using larger electric cargo bikes and more curbside loading zones would be added to every residential neighborhood.”