Inside Tucson Business published a couple stories earlier this month related to the streetcar and bicycling safety.

The first was a news story about bike safety and the streetcar.

The second was an editorial by Inside Tucson Business, which called for banning bikes along the streetcar line.

Here’s a snippet from the editorial:

There are several spots along the streetcar route in which there is clearly not enough room for everyone – something’s got to give.

It is only a matter of time before some inattentive motorist on Fourth Avenue doors a bicyclist and sends the rider into the path of the streetcar.

But none of the solutions are politically easy. Ban bikes in a bike-crazy town and a caca storm of galactic proportions will ensue. Try banning parked cars on Fourth Avenue or Congress and the business community will tear city officials from their offices and impale them on parking meters (metaphorically, of course).

Either of those politically difficult decisions will create exactly what the city doesn’t want right now – hard feelings about the streetcar.

So instead, it’s marching toward a ribbon cutting with fingers crossed that nothing bad happens once full operation starts and it has time to find some small amount of consensus about what to do about areas of the route that city Councilman Steve Kozachik described as “pinch points.”

And that may work, if the city is lucky. If it’s unlucky, wrongful death lawyers and insurance companies may force the city to fix that which it’s ignoring now.

From our point of view, the easiest and most practical solution is to ban bicycles along the streetcar route, as theUrban Land Institute recommended in December in its report on downtown development.

That won’t be a very happy discussion or a painless debate, but better to argue now than weep later.

The editor of ITB asked me if I’d be willing to pen a response to their editorial.

I was and I did. My editorial, Bikes good for Tucson business, banning them is not, was published yesterday afternoon.

Since Inside Tucson Business is a business news magazine, I tried to make a compelling case as to why bikes and not parking is more important to local merchants’ bottom line.

Here’s a snippet:

At a time when the rest of the country and world is realizing the economic value bicyclists provide to local businesses, ITB is suggesting removing thousands of two-wheeled customers who bike along the streetcar route every day. The insinuation is that drivers and parking are more important to businesses than cyclists.

Instead, the city should remove some or all parking along the route to provide safe and separated bicycle infrastructure, which will also benefit merchants along the streetcar line.

Study after study show that from an economic perspective, bicyclists are far more valuable to business than parking spaces and the motorists who use them.

One recent study out of Portland suggests customers who arrive by bicycle spend more than customers who drive. On average, each person who arrived by bicycle spent almost 24 percent more per month at local businesses than their motoring counterpart.

A second study in Toronto had similar results, finding cyclists visited more often than other transportation options and spent more each month.

Local businesses along Ninth Avenue in New York City saw a 49 percent increase in retail sales after protected bike lanes were installed. Sales throughout Manhattan only increased three percent during the same time period. Additionally, retail vacancies along First and Second Avenues — which also received separated bike lanes — decreased by 49 percent.

Check out the rest of my editorial and let me know what you think.