Cassie Hoperich, Robert Grobe & Madeleine Pelzel: Lessons from Houston
Transcript
Avi Stopper (00:06)
Welcome to Bike Networks Now. I'm Avi Stopper, the founder of Bike Streets. Through a series of conversations with leaders in bike transportation and beyond, we're trying to answer a question: Why is bike transportation still not possible for most people in American cities, and how can we make it a reality? Despite voter support and billions of dollars of investment, there's no city in America where biking is a practical reality for people of all ages and abilities.
Why is that? And how can we fix it so anyone can ride to the places they want to go today? These aren't just freewheeling conversations — we're in search of an answer, and that answer, a modern approach to innovation, is the topic of a book we're writing on how cities can make bike transportation possible today.
We've now done a bunch of episodes in our quest to understand why biking still isn't possible for most people in most cities. Generally speaking, they've been pretty high-level conversations about the bike movement broadly. Over a series of episodes, we're going local — trying to learn as much as we can about how the bike movement is doing in cities across America by talking with the folks who know those cities best: the advocates and planners trying to make bike transportation a practical reality.
Today we're going to Houston. And if you're thinking, "biking in Houston — what?" — that's exactly why this is one of the conversations I've been most looking forward to. Houston, I think it's fair to say, is the punchline in a lot of national conversations about cars and sprawl. It's the fourth largest city in the country, defined in the popular imagination by freeways and heat and distance. The PeopleForBikes city rating for Houston is a mere 17 out of 100. So it's the last place most people would expect to be navigable by bike.
We're going to poke at that mythology today with Madeleine Pelzel, a planner with Nelson\Nygaard, who created the Houston Bike Guide and led the Bike Streets mapping project in Houston. Robert Grobe is program coordinator at Bike Houston.
Avi Stopper (02:22)
And Cassie Hoperich is the vice president for planning and economic development at Downtown Houston+. Cassie, the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University called Houston the most sprawling, least dense, most automobile-dependent major city in America. What's your take on that?
Cassie Hoperich (02:45)
It's interesting to phrase it that way, given that there are so many cities across North America with a built environment quite similar to Houston's. I think what they're perhaps insinuating is that given the tremendous population we have — fourth largest city in the country, nearly about to overtake Chicago for third — in that context, on a per capita basis, one could argue it.
I'm not a transportation planner and I'm not an expert in bike systems or networks across the country. But I would say we do have a substantially lacking network relative to the sheer volume of people who live in this city and could otherwise take advantage of access to bike trails, or at least roads with some form of protection for cycling.
Avi Stopper (03:43)
Within that context, describe your work — what Downtown Houston+ is thinking about and working on to counter either the mythology or the actual reality. It's probably a little of both.
Cassie Hoperich (03:58)
The organization I work for is actually an alliance of three different organizations — not uncommon in many North American cities and some cities around the world. We're an entity that includes a redevelopment authority, which means we can work with incremental property tax and use property tax revenue from downtown to invest in capital projects: streetscape projects, parks, as well as buildings, so long as there's a public benefit to a contribution we make to a building. Think affordable housing, flood mitigation, stormwater management improvements, things of that nature. We're also a management district, which is also referred to as a business improvement district. The alliance of all three organizations is guided by a strategic alignment plan.
What's notable about our organization is that Houston has quite a conservative revenue cap, which means the city limits the amount of tax revenue it can bring in. In a geography like ours, that makes an entity like ours more useful than it would be in other city contexts — Seattle or San Francisco, say, which don't have this type of revenue cap imposed. On a day-to-day basis, it means we're often at the helm of leading not just planning, design, and engineering for public spaces, but also the implementation and then the stewardship of them — enabled through interlocal agreements, city ordinances, and other forms of bureaucratic infrastructure that let us serve in a quasi-governmental role.
To get back to your question: what does that mean for broader policy and planning goals around bike infrastructure? It means historically we've had quite a voice in the conversation. While the city put together the bike plan, there are obviously parts of downtown where we lead streetscape projects. Most recently, in terms of bike infrastructure we've realized, we led a substantial streetscape improvement project on a street called Bagby. Bagby Street now has an off-street shared path of travel for both cyclists and pedestrians, and it connects a number of our theaters, our aquarium, and several parks — not only to each other and to the north-south points of downtown, but also to entrances to our Bayou Greenways network, specifically Buffalo Bayou. So that's the role we've played.
In terms of capital projects, what we're really focused on today are improvements to our public realm that advance heat mitigation and spur economic development. We're focused on our existing sidewalks and on work that helps the health of our downtown buildings — and specifically the health of our storefronts: bringing in new retail and keeping it here, so we can become a place where people live, work, play, and enjoy. That's our focus at the moment. But historically — most recently in 2021 — we did a $12 million project to build a pretty great connector.
Avi Stopper (07:10)
That's great, thank you for the context. Robert, over to you. Since you're with Bike Houston, I need to ask you the fundamental question this show is probing: whether bike transportation is a reality in Houston for most people, why it is or isn't, and what the actual reality is on the ground. From your perspective, how would you describe the reality of biking around Houston today?
Robert Grobe (07:40)
It's complex. It's as diverse an experience as the people and the food scene in Houston. A lot of people like to refer to Houston as a city of neighborhoods, so you have a lot of distinct neighborhoods with their own culture, their own highlights, their own lowlights. What we see is that people in certain parts of the city have a very different biking experience than people in others.
It is a reality that you can bike around Houston. Some people choose to do it. Some people don't have a choice and are forced to do it — a lot of Houstonians don't have access to a car. Public transit is spotty, and it's just like the bike network: very uneven across the city. So there are people day in, day out, biking when it's hot and when it's cold, and it is possible.
I hate that for a lot of people it's almost an identity as a rebel — that we've pushed against the headwinds the built environment presents and we continue to bike anyway. I wish it were something easier for more people to get into. I think this conversation will lead toward some of the tools and resources making it easier. But right now, it takes a lot of courage to bike on Houston streets. It takes a lot of know-how. It gets easier with each month, with each year, as you learn the tips and tricks — knowing the right routes obviously makes a huge difference. We're also a city that's diced into little pieces by highways, so knowing how to get under and over these highways is really important.
I think the perception of Houston as a car-dominant city is true. I led a ride last month, and we crossed over six different highways. The visuals of going over I-59 or I-45 — it's just wild how wide these highways have gotten in Houston.
Avi Stopper (09:44)
I think that's a good segue over to Mads, who led the low-stress Houston bike map creation. Given this context — the reputation, the low bike network analysis score — the low-stress Houston map you assembled is something like 630 bidirectional miles. One of our underlying Bike Streets theories is that in every city there's a complete bike network hiding in plain sight, to Robert's point about needing to know the routes. So Mads, I'd like your take on that. Is there indeed, all of these challenges notwithstanding, a complete network in Houston hiding in plain sight?
Madeleine Pelzel (10:32)
It's a good trick question, Avi — I appreciate that. I do think that's the question that led to the formation of the bike guide. The initial impetus was that all of these routes — which take months, years, sometimes lots of near-miss collisions with vehicles to figure out — needed to be drawn. Given the number of people who die walking and biking in Harris County each year, it's quite an urgent piece of information to get out there.
I don't want to call it complete, though, because completeness offers a sense of safety that all those miles we've drawn don't offer. They are the best available network, and I take that pretty literally. Those lines don't mean the same type of safety or conditions in every instance. A map drawn based on what's often referred to as level of stress for people walking or biking would have many different flavors, and the lines drawn on the Houston Bike Streets map or the Houston Bike Guide definitely do not incorporate a uniform level of safety.
One of the big opportunities the bike guide tries to describe is the places that are most difficult to cross — the highways, but also a lot of our major thoroughfares and arterials — and how to get across those as safely as we can right now. Each of those moments where you're trying to cross one of these, those intersections are statistically the most dangerous places in the road network generally. Two vectors moving and intersecting is dangerous. So those crossings that are currently quite dangerous — that's why we have "careful crossings" as one of the categories on the bike guide, because there are places that currently don't have any mitigations for those risks. Those are great opportunities, outside of completing the bike network, to do things that would make it at least a little bit more complete for more users.
Avi Stopper (13:01)
If you were prioritizing, Mads — if you had a set budget for development work around a network — would you be assigning that budget generally to building protected bike lanes, or to fixing point locations like these challenging crossings? What do you see as the priority?
Madeleine Pelzel (13:23)
I think it differs, which isn't a helpful answer. But there are a lot of contexts in Houston where we have really great neighborhood side streets that can help you get around and don't need specific bike infrastructure to qualify as an all-ages-and-abilities bikeway. I like to think of a complete bike network as one where you're not moving between different levels of safety.
So if we were looking at a set area or a neighborhood plan, we could really determine whether a linear treatment was needed or more point-intersection treatments were needed to create a zone of a more complete network in that area — where you could get in and through and between all of those thoroughfares, arterials, highways, or to a bayou, safely.
Avi Stopper (14:21)
Cassie, Rob described a city of neighborhoods — all of these neighborhoods, and to Mads's point, they're often islands quite substantially separated from downtown. How do you think about getting people to downtown? If the goal is to get a lot of folks downtown to use the various facilities, to visit and patronize the businesses and come regularly — is your focus just downtown? Or are you thinking about connectivity out into the periphery, so people can actually get there, not just get around once they're there?
Cassie Hoperich (15:05)
Absolutely — we do think about connectivity in and out of downtown. It doesn't work without ingress and egress that work for all. In that spirit, we look at accessibility for single-passenger vehicles, for buses, either park-and-ride or our greater METRO network. We look at pedestrian connectivity, both on sidewalks and to and from our trail network.
The northern part of downtown is hugged by Buffalo Bayou, and it's also where White Oak Bayou meets downtown. So those are two major pieces of our watershed that have highly amenitized trails. I like to describe downtown as the knuckle of our multimodal system. Connectivity to it is incredibly important no matter what mode of transportation you're using.
To the points that have been raised: we've had a bike plan produced, and really important ligaments of that plan have been implemented. Even prior to administration changes, a lot of the decision-making around what was implemented and what wasn't was intended to be phased. So there are already gaps in a pretty central aspect of the bike network — and I'm not even talking about changes that have happened in the last year.
In terms of what's important right now, what's guiding our work and our agenda, we're really focused on strengthening our connection to the bayou network. We have clear entrances and exits into that network, but what we've seen is that the entrances from downtown into the network are some of the lowest-accessed in the city. And I mean both the entrances and the trails themselves — they're just not utilized. You can look slightly outside of downtown at the activity on the trails and see tremendous numbers, both walking and running and rolling, whether on a bike, a scooter, or in a wheelchair. That number really starts to fall off the closer you get to downtown, which is a shame, because again, the knuckle of the network is here. You could get from White Oak Bayou to Buffalo Bayou, east-west.
That's one thing that stands out — not just to me personally, but it's what came up after months of extensive community and stakeholder engagement for our 2025 Public Realm Action Plan. When we asked people what is not working in the public realm here, it was trail connection.
We talk a lot about what it takes to feel safe on a bike. I bike to work every day. I have no problem doing it on both bike lanes and not bike lanes. But I also came here from New York City, where I biked regularly, as well as Los Angeles and San Francisco. So I have a different temperament — it's a totally different reality for me. If I were to take, say, my father-in-law on a bike ride for the first time in years, which I did a few years ago — where did we start? The bayou network. It's extensive and it's very well connected. So if we're trying to get even close to the number of people who take single-passenger vehicles into downtown, let alone the bus, we've got to start from our strengths. And our strengths for sure are our bayou trails, and we need to strengthen those connections. Huge priority for us now — and the people told us it's a priority too.
Avi Stopper (18:32)
I love that you mentioned your father-in-law. When making these low-stress maps, I encourage folks — because often they're people like ourselves who are already confident navigating city streets — to have a companion, either literally or figuratively in their mind. Someone in their life who theoretically wants to ride a bike more but doesn't, for any set of reasons; generally safety and the ability to navigate are the core ones. That's a really great example of being out there and interpreting the world in a very different way because of the person you're with, whom you have to empathize with. You have to really see the world through their eyes: how might they get places?
Just to button that up — you did all this public outreach and engagement. It sounds like there is connectivity to the trail, but why aren't people using it? Are there big gaps? Are there sort of on-ramps to the trails but giant gaps? What are the reasons people aren't availing themselves of it?
Cassie Hoperich (19:36)
I'd say that at the entrances — going in either direction, whether you're getting onto the bayou trails or off of them — there are not many adjacent amenities. If you were on the Buffalo Bayou Trail and said, "I want to go into downtown," it's not going to take you right away to any type of destination right out the gate. You immediately enter either a set of more civic office buildings or more corporate facilities — in both cases, office buildings.
That's why a huge goal for us is thinking about the journey someone might go on, and how we then look at their level of comfort as they get further into downtown, to a destination that makes more sense to them. That said, we do have bike lanes downtown. We have two primary arteries, Austin Street and Lamar Street, and both feed right from those entrances and get you straight to one of our biggest, most popular parks downtown. We've lost some connectivity to the east side of downtown, but when we measured cycling activity prior to the change in that connection, we still saw very, very low volumes of ridership — and we measured across times of year, weekdays and weekends.
So in general, while we do have bike lanes with protection of some form, either concrete barriers or what we all call the armadillos, and we have color calling out these bike lanes, and they've been around for a while — I just think we have low ridership in general. It's both about what's adjacent to the trails and who's really using them, but also about what journey you're trying to complete. That still needs some more thought.
For me, as a daily commuter, I'm on a protected bike lane for most of my trip, but then not when I'm actually getting to my office. So there stands to be better connectivity to front doors, if you will. The challenge is that the data right now is so low. We have very, very low ridership compared to the volume of commuters taking other forms of transportation.
So I think it means starting with recreation and looking at weekends. By recreation I don't just mean the bayou trails — I mean people out riding on weekends and exploring our city that way. We see a higher volume of riders then. I think there's a way to rework some muscle memory by bending those journeys into downtown a bit more. How can we amenitize the entrances more, pull people to destinations centered around weekend activities, and show them firsthand: hey, this is a pretty nice journey. Now consider, when you go to work on Monday, maybe trying that route again.
It's looking at the lowest-hanging fruit, where we're most likely to encourage behavior change — because that's really the challenge in all these cities. This is wildly foreign. Density is not what we have. So you're having to work with where there already is some trust. That's where looking at those types of journeys is likely where we'll see greater success.
Avi Stopper (22:55)
I can just see the trail of ice cream stands leading people off the trail and into downtown. Bike to Work Day here in Denver is fascinating — the extent to which free burritos activate people and get them riding bikes is pretty astonishing.
Okay, so we've now referenced the plan on a few occasions. I think that's the 2016 Houston Bike Plan, which called for something like 1,700 miles of bikeways over 20 years. So we're 10 years into that. The estimated cost of the total network was somewhere in the range of $500 million. Robert, over to you: we're halfway there in terms of the timeline. Are we halfway there in terms of the construction of said network?
Robert Grobe (23:45)
I'll give the city a lot of credit. There was not a lot of infrastructure prior to the Houston Bike Plan, and the infrastructure that was there was very low comfort. The city and the county knocked it out of the park getting going with the Houston Bike Plan. It did take some additional funding to encourage some of the entities, including the city, to invest in the infrastructure.
But we've seen a massive expansion of the bike network, and the city deserves a lot of credit for that. The individual management districts and reinvestment zones, the Harris County commissioners — we have four county precincts, each with over a million people in them, so this is a massive area we're talking about. And we've seen all of the county commissioners, even in the more rural or conservative parts of the greater Houston area, invest in bike amenities.
I've been fortunate to see Houston through the eyes of people new to the city — people coming with a keen eye for biking — and there's been a lot of positive response to biking in Houston. Now, some of that is maybe not as applicable to the person getting out on a Monday morning trying to fight Houston traffic. But you can come to Houston and have an amazing experience by bike. And as we continue to invest in biking and in public transit, we start to chip away at a little bit of the car dominance Houston has been known for.
Avi Stopper (25:33)
I was hoping we'd poke some holes in the mythology around Houston, so thank you for that uplifting and optimistic note. Nonetheless — what would you say are some of the good, the bad, and the ugly hard-won lessons from the creation of a bike master plan and how it produces action?
Robert Grobe (25:55)
One of the positives that came out of it was the depth of engagement. The level of stakeholder engagement and community engagement was really top-notch. The bike plan that was produced is comprehensive, and it is the network Houston deserves.
On the less positive side, we're now 10 years out from that plan. If you look at the names, if you look at the organizations — a lot of the organizations still exist, but we have a whole new city council, we have a new mayor, we have a lot of new people at the organizations that were part of the planning. So there's been a loss of institutional knowledge around what went into that plan: why they chose a particular street to put a bike lane on, why they didn't put a bike lane on another street. When those conversations were being had, you had a lot of really good-hearted and talented individuals having them. But time has changed. I wasn't part of any of that — not to say I would have made it any better, but I wasn't part of those conversations. So as an advocate now, going and speaking in front of communities and at meetings, there's a serious gap between the people who were part of the original planning and the people implementing it today.
Madeleine Pelzel (27:20)
Coming from the perspective of a planner who often gets hired for these one-off efforts — something like the Houston Bike Plan; I wasn't on that team, but the firm I used to be with was — I think it's important for cities to then own those processes. The website that got made during that wasn't continuously updated. There wasn't a process that was formalized after the big day when it all got signed at City Hall. That was an amazing moment, and then there wasn't an effort afterward. It takes a lot of maintenance to keep people up to date and informed.
That's something Downtown Houston+ has done super well throughout this last effort with the Main Street Promenade. We constantly knew what was happening. I'm sure there were separate conversations with business owners and so on, but all those stakeholders — those are relationships that have to be maintained, and the public's trust and their ability to keep caring about it has to be nurtured and maintained.
So I just want to emphasize Rob's point. Not to say the plan wasn't a success, but some of the follow-on — even just immediately afterwards, and I think the pandemic didn't help — that trust and relationship building is so critical to anything we're trying to do in the public realm. It can't be understated. That has to be a follow-on effort after the major one that's the big win.
Avi Stopper (28:52)
Point taken. And with your planning hat on — these things are multi-generational to a degree. It's implicit in a lot of these plans. There's a level of fatigue, and transitions and buy-in are a huge component. You, as I understand it, have a mayor who is less supportive of all of this than the previous mayor, under whom the plan was either passed or who came into office immediately after it was adopted and took ownership of it.
This is a theme we see repeating from city to city. They adopt a bike master plan, there's some momentum and energy about it, and the timeline for development is two decades, three decades in some cases. Do you see that, Mads, as a fundamental flaw in the planning process? Setting aside the gravitational pull of the difficulty of building stuff — is this assumption that a plan is a decades-long thing a broken assumption? Is it something we need to reevaluate, to find ways to accelerate so the momentum, the moment, can be harnessed?
Madeleine Pelzel (30:05)
I don't want to dissuade people from thinking about the future as a vision. Having a visionary, maybe multi-decade plan is reasonable when we're thinking about transportation modes. All modes have long-term plans. Long-range plans are a very important part of how we build and maintain things at a state of good repair, and how we build toward that vision day to day.
However, specifically with the type of infrastructure we're talking about for a bike plan, there's a lot that can be done more immediately as temporary pilot infrastructure — that can allow us to test things, see if people's behavior changes, and then actually work on the behavior change itself. Changing people's behavior is a whole field of study. Sometimes when we're talking about transportation and planning, and how great it would be if everyone were just walking around like we were in New York City and not Houston, I think we forget to discuss the elephant in the room, which is that we're all creatures of habit. Changing someone's commute trip — like Cassie was saying — is the hardest trip to change. We should think more about those other trips that are in more reasonable grasp.
And if, at the onset of a plan, we did more of the temporary or less permanent infrastructure that lets people feel some of the safety and security the final plan would deliver, maybe we could see how that behavior worked, gain some of that trust, and gain political momentum in a way that would make it easier for people to both stay connected to the plan and build political will and support for actually getting it done.
Without some of that continual work after the plan — and that's work that has to be funded — it's hard to keep passing the torch on a multi-decade plan when maybe the two-year, five-year, and ten-year parts weren't a priority in the plan-making process.
Avi Stopper (32:32)
I think you're dancing around a term that's basically a drinking game on this podcast — I have to say "tactical urbanism" a couple of times in each episode. Is that what you're getting at?
Madeleine Pelzel (32:44)
It is, but I think sometimes tactical urbanism gets a rap for not being institutionally formal. What I'm talking about are formal temporary lanes. A couple of years ago on Polk Street, there was an orange barricade — I think it had sand or water in it — that connected the typical Polk bike lane to Austin Street when the Lamar stretch around Discovery Green was closed. I see Rob nodding; I think you remember this. That was a very formal, city-produced temporary bike lane. I guess we can call that tactical urbanism, but I don't want to take the onus away from the folks who have the power to do things in our right-of-way.
There are definitely things that can be done from a tactical perspective, and we're talking more from the community or advocate perspective there. But often, when we're thinking about something like a bus network, there are things the transit agency can do in the short term to augment or change the bus rider's experience and then see how that affects ridership. So I think we can think about bike planning in a similar way — there are formal means to do short-term improvements and then evaluate the results.
Avi Stopper (34:14)
Cassie, I've got to kick this over to you, because I'm fascinated by the structure of your organization as you described it. It sounds — and maybe I'm overfitting this a little — like you have almost a local DOT adjacency, which is to say you have purview to do stuff like this. Am I correct that you and your organization have the wherewithal to do demonstration projects, to coordinate that kind of thing, to do temporary installations that let people see what the future can be like? Is that written into your charter and how you operate?
Cassie Hoperich (34:58)
It's not written into our charter, but it is how we operate. We're still talking about city-owned land — this is still right-of-way. What we're able to do, because of the nature of the projects we do, is partner with the city, get permits, and work with them on unique permitting configurations to test things out.
I appreciate what Mads is saying about tactical urbanism. I worked in tactical urbanism — one of my first jobs in San Francisco was testing out a number of design interventions on Market Street to see how we could create places for people. What differentiates what we think of as tactical or temporary urbanism from more strategic moves is whether it backs into some larger plan, goal, or at least study.
An example of how we've done that recently is Main Street. It's the spine of our downtown. Once upon a time it had a streetcar, which went away, and then it was just for cars. And then — poof — pandemic. Not only had we reintroduced light rail to the street over the previous 20 years, but with the pandemic we had a big question mark about how the street would continue to be used. We did some tactical urbanism. We tried out more open space for businesses, many different configurations. Given our reputation and our ability to run design processes and capital projects, we were invited in to evolve that into a permanent transformation for the street. So now seven blocks of Main Street — thanks to studying it, thanks to measuring impact, especially on the businesses and residents along that corridor — consist of sidewalk space and light rail and no other form of modality.
In general, it's about instilling trust in people, especially in places where cycling is not only somewhat foreign — particularly on typical roads rather than a trail — but also dangerous. It scares a lot of people. But to Rob's point, it's also sometimes the only option for single-car or no-car households.
What's challenging about cycling in Houston is that our city, much like Paris actually, has people who are more resourced financially concentrated in and around the urban core — we call it the inner loop. It's the same in Paris. Those who earn less live further out. It's a very typical demographic pattern, and again, the same in Paris. Paris is actually experiencing something similar to Houston, which is the questioning of bike infrastructure in the urban core by individuals who have no other choice but to commute by single-passenger vehicle to get to their job, and who see bike lanes not necessarily for what they are, but as a symbolic impediment to their dignity, to their own lived experience, and to the inconveniences they must bear that people living closer to their jobs don't have to experience. In Paris you see a lot of movements for removal of bike infrastructure, because it's insulting to those who not only have to drive in and can't bike in, but don't even have metro access at the distance they live from their jobs. That's why it's a focus now for the city of Paris to expand their metro network.
But cut to Houston — a city that doesn't have anything close to that metro network — and it's foreign and confusing on many different levels. So there is experimentation, but there's also the political reality of working-class individuals seeing something they haven't experienced, because they live in a place like Houston, and immediately seeing it as an offense.
So testing out ideas, changing them, showing adaptation — that's huge. But two, being mindful not to hang a plan so much on a single administration. There will always be different mayors, different city council people, different department heads. If you hang a bike plan like ours too much on one administration, you're tethering it with political challenges as much as built-environment challenges. The way planners need to continue to advance work is not to shy away from long-range plans, but to embed them more in the community than with elected officials — knowing that one administration may be focused on a different priority, and maybe it's not bike infrastructure on roadways; maybe the next administration is focused on planting trees smack in the middle of streets, and that could mess with the plan in a different way. You have no idea what's coming down the pipeline with elected officials. So the more you can embed big ideas in the community and make it as plain as day to the average person — that's really what we need to be looking at in terms of planning in our public realm going forward.
Avi Stopper (40:19)
With that sensitivity in mind, are there projects you've run that you'd hold up as leading lights — examples of how to present these kinds of things to folks? It doesn't have to be bike-related specifically, but types of changes to the built environment that people get to see first, that they might be apprehensive about if they only learned about it in the abstract. Are there projects where you've thought, yeah, we just nailed this? I'm thinking about the Times Square reconfiguration in New York City as an example.
Cassie Hoperich (40:57)
Our Main Street project was absolutely that. It was only several businesses that took advantage of it — essentially what they did was reclaim roadway in order to have expanded space for their patrons. That not only made businesses happy and gave them more seats they could put people in and sell food to, but it showed residents what this looks like and what it feels like. It really demystified the notion of taking away space for people to either walk through or for businesses to use.
I'd call that strategic and iterative phasing for projects, which is a huge area of work I've been privileged to work in for almost 15 years. It's that bit-by-bit approach — but also being willing to say where things didn't work, talk about it with people, own it, really embrace that level of accountability, and then repeat back exactly how you made a change for the experience that didn't work well for folks.
Main Street was definitely that. And it has enabled us to work with the city to create a new definition of public space called "managed public realm," which means we're now able, as a city, to look at corridors around Houston and contemplate a new future for them as managed public realm — essentially linear parks. That was an outcome of this as well. So not just a beneficial thing for downtown that allowed for iteration and humility in the process, but something the rest of Houston can come to know.
I also think, though, that for decision makers, it's the classic — was it Jonathan Pacheco Bell? — "you can't plan from your desk." We've all heard that. It's great. I love that sentiment; it's wonderful. And I just don't think that, despite it being repeated and memeified over and over in our collective urbanist space, people actually do it — especially in Houston, because it's hot as heck. But it's so important for the work we do. For instance, right after this, I'm going to be outside in ninety-six-degree heat meeting with a business about something they want to do with their facade. That's just what you have to do. You can't email about it.
On projects like that, when you iterate and someone says to you, "I hate this bike lane because it slows me down when I get to my bank" — don't just dismiss it and say, "find a new route." Go get in their car and drive it, show them a new route, and time it with them. Literally do these things, because people may not even remember their specific gripe, but they'll remember that act of listening and humility. We've found that these types of actions don't just change people's minds; they can create true champions in the least expected type of person.
I also think that, especially in a 2026 reality with a new generation of planners coming up, we've lost a little bit of the meaning behind getting out there, doing the work, pounding pavement, and feeling the experience for people — because we can rest on our laurels, our great competencies, and our education. It's like: no, we don't have all the answers. What we're doing now may feel right and may feel fact-based, but look at the past. We've always changed and iterated. The only way to know for sure is to get out there. My sweet, understanding team appreciates the civic-mindedness, I think, as they sweat with me when we go out every day. But it's just what you have to do.
Avi Stopper (44:27)
There are few things I think are as compelling in this work as iteration — small iteration based on actual observation. And it's cool to hear that one of the results is basically a proof of concept the city is inclined to scale to other parts of the community. That's a great story.
Robert, I want to kick it over to you and talk about the political realities. From what I gather, the mayoral transition has been challenging from the perspective of getting a lot of the bike plan implemented. It's that handoff — the level of momentum, the sense of enthusiasm and ownership people have — that's difficult when there's a substantial transition. Am I right in my understanding? And how has Bike Houston been thinking about greasing the wheels on that, making the mayoral handoff a lot smoother in terms of continuing progress?
Robert Grobe (45:31)
You're on the right track. You might even be underselling it. To say it's a challenge would be generous.
There were a lot of projects in the hopper. We all know these infrastructure projects — the design time, the community engagement time, the construction time — those are measured in years. We had a lot of projects at different points in the design phase that were shelved. We had the same engineer presenting on a project in, say, 2023, and then in 2025 presenting completely different projects, selling the neighborhoods on the safety and the improvements each time.
It was jarring to a lot of people like myself who got involved in bike advocacy during the good times. What's that Andy Bernard quote about how we don't recognize we're in the good times? I got involved as a bike advocate — it had a very sad beginning to it — but there was a lot of cheerleading the city on the investments they were making. Bike Houston primarily positioned itself as a cheerleader and educator to the community, explaining the benefits of safe active infrastructure coming to their neighborhood.
With the most recent mayoral change, we found ourselves being painted at times as a special interest group, as an outside agitator — even though, as we said with the bike plan, this was a lot of community and stakeholder engagement that all spoke with one voice saying we want safe active infrastructure. And now there's outsized importance put on a few critics of the bike infrastructure we have. No bike lane is perfect. When you have safe active infrastructure that creates barriers between people and cars, you have people hitting curbs, you have people causing a little bit of damage to their vehicle. And that now is the main driver of how our city is being built out: how accommodating is it to individual vehicles? Are we giving up space for other forms of transportation?
There was a moment where Bike Houston felt like the rug was pulled out from underneath us. We had projects in the hopper. We don't build the bike lanes, we don't design the bike lanes, but we're big fans of them and big promoters of them. We realized that the city at times is going to be working with us, and at other times is going to be doing things we have disagreements about. So we've tried to strengthen ourselves internally — doing things that utilize the informal bike network, highlighting how that can help you get around the city by bike. We're doing bike lane cleanups to show we have skin in the game; we'll actually be hosting a bike lane cleanup next weekend. We've moved toward a more direct-service, internal locus of control — we can't wait around for everything to be perfect. So we're out there doing what we can with the resources we have.
Avi Stopper (48:49)
Mads, you created — or were one of the central figures in the creation of — the Houston Bike Guide. You're kind of the personification of the Houston Bike Guide in some respects. So, a non-cartography question: what do you say to folks when they say, "Yeah, I can't ride my bike, the conditions are totally impossible"?
Madeleine Pelzel (49:11)
A couple of things. Every city has challenges. Houston is unique in that it's flat, and I think we sometimes don't sell enough how much that makes biking and walking easier for a lot of people. Learning to ride a bike when you're not trying to stop the bike going downhill or start the bike going uphill — those things are really challenging and can be huge barriers. Also, icy streets can be huge barriers. Snow on the streets for months and months of the year. Of course, we've had our fair share of ice storms these last couple of years, but it's not prolonged.
So, a couple of things to counterbalance: it's hot sometimes, and that's a really hard part, but it's also getting hotter all over the country for longer parts of the year. And there's a lot we can do to mitigate that. One is to keep going outside as it gets hotter. Your body does adapt — at least some people's bodies adapt more — and that can make it easier, rather than stopping biking during May and June and then trying to start again in July. That will definitely be harder.
But there's a lot we can do in the urban realm to increase people's ability to enjoy biking when it's hot. When we had bike share in Houston, July, I think, had the highest ridership of any month. So people do ride in the heat, and historically have — we have the data to show it. We have counters on the bayous, so you can see every single day how many people have ridden on many of the bayous across the city, and those numbers are always highest in the summer months. Statistically, people are riding when it's hot, for sure.
But shade is a huge factor. More shade directly along our bayou trails is super important. The areas of the bayou that get the most use during the summer are often the ones with shady aspects, compared to some that are much more concretized, as I like to say. Restoring the riparian buffer to our watershed would really help with cooling along those trails, in addition to shade within our neighborhood contexts and along our arterials.
That's a long-term project. Trees take a long time to grow. But it's never a bad time to start planting them. We thank all the people who planted our beautiful live oaks many decades ago, and I think we can lean on that principle and try to ensure that in fifty years there's a much higher tree canopy in our city, which will make it that much more comfortable as conditions continue to stay hot for longer parts of the year.
Avi Stopper (51:51)
I can just see the guerrilla planters with their trees and their cargo bikes going out in the middle of the night and dropping in some live oaks. You're selling me on riding a bike in Houston.
Last question, Mads: what's your favorite place to ride a bike to in Houston?
Madeleine Pelzel (52:07)
To ride a bike to, or to ride a bike along?
Avi Stopper (52:10)
It's an open question.
Madeleine Pelzel (52:07)
I'm going to make a blanket statement that I love all of the Bayou Greenways. But my actual favorite — which, to my own chagrin, I didn't discover until 2020 — is the Spring Creek Greenway, north of the city. From what I've gathered, it's the longest linear urban forest in the country, and it has this incredible trail network. The way to say it is that it's between some highways, but that's the most useful way to describe it: between I-69 and I-45 is the paved section, and then it continues on toward the west from there. So it goes roughly from Kingwood toward The Woodlands, and it's this gorgeous urban forested connector along the San Jacinto River. It's truly a gem of our region.
Avi Stopper (53:01)
Cassie, same question for you.
Cassie Hoperich (53:04)
I really like biking up White Oak — as far as I can, but usually to a street called Ella, which is super scary to bike down. But at the end of it there's a brewery I love very much. I'm a very treat-motivated cyclist. So from my home to this brewery along White Oak is a solid weekend workout adventure with a very tasty treat breaking it up. It's something I love very much.
But I'll also plug a future ride I'd like to do more of: the ride from my home in the East End to Memorial Park. There's a section of the Buffalo Bayou Trail that just doesn't exist, and hopefully one day there will be some version of a protected trail for cyclists and walkers to get to Memorial Park, which is an outstanding green space. I see a future where that'll be my new favorite ride.
Avi Stopper (54:07)
I like the vision. And I'm totally adopting "treat-motivated rider." All of our group bike rides here always, without fail, end with ice cream. That is treat motivation right there.
Robert, last but not least — what's your favorite place to ride a bike to in Houston?
Robert Grobe (54:26)
I'm sitting in Bike Houston's downtown office, off the Austin Street bike lane, and we're about three blocks south of Buffalo Bayou. At the end of the Austin Street bike lane is the José Campos Torres plaza, which provides a wonderful gateway to the bayou trail. It speaks to Cassie's point earlier about having wayfinding, having some way to find these wonderful trails. There's a section of the Buffalo Bayou Trail through downtown that sneaks under some buildings and off to the side of them, and it's just an amazing hidden gem of the Houston bike network. Buffalo Bayou Partnership is continuing to improve the trail system along Buffalo Bayou.
I'm also a big treat guy. A lovely date night my wife and I have is to bike over to Black's Bodega in the warehouse district, get a pint of ice cream, and then — there's a new section of Buffalo Bayou on the east side with a really cool hill you can sit on that overlooks downtown. It feels like you're on a European vacation when you're there. So that's become our "when we've been good for the week, let's go to Black's, get some ice cream, and go to the hill."
Avi Stopper (55:48)
That is the right note to end on — again, poking holes in the mythology of Houston. It's just like a European city. Take that quote and bank it.
Thank you all for your time. I really appreciate it, and thank you for your work. I look forward to riding bikes with you someday.
Robert Grobe (56:04)
Thanks, Avi.
Avi Stopper (56:07)
Thanks for listening. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for guests you'd like to hear from, drop us a line at [email protected]. Bike Networks Now is hosted by me, Avi Stopper, and edited, mixed, and produced by David Childs. The show is a production of Bike Streets. Anyone should be able to ride a bike to any destination in their city today. You can learn more about our work at bikestreets.com.
