David Meza is the Community Programs Coordinator and Adam Davies is a Board Member at Bike Easy, the bike advocacy group in New Orleans. We’ve been collaborating on a low-stress bike map over the last few months and I’ve been fascinated by the challenges in New Orleans that are at once unique and quite familiar based on what I’ve seen in cities across the country. So we’re here today to discuss the state of biking in New Orleans.

Avi Stopper (00:00)

We've now done a bunch of episodes of the podcast in our quest to understand why bike transportation still isn't possible for most people in most cities. So far, these conversations have been fairly high-level — about the bike movement broadly. Over the next set of episodes, we're going local. We're going 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 trying to make bike transportation a practical reality. We're calling these episodes "The State of Biking."

David Meza is the community programs coordinator and Adam Davies is a board member at Bike Easy, the bike advocacy group in New Orleans. We've been collaborating for a while now on a low-stress bike map, and I've been fascinated by the challenges in New Orleans — challenges that are at once unique and quite familiar based on what I've seen in cities across the country. So we're here today to discuss the state of biking in New Orleans. Guys, welcome to the show.

Adam Davies (01:03)

Great, thanks — happy to be here, Avi.

David Meza (01:03)

Thanks for having us.

Avi Stopper (01:04)

Let's start with what everyone knows best about New Orleans: Mardi Gras, of course. We're going to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let's start with the good. It seems like bikes really make Mardi Gras happen for a lot of local folks. You have a campaign, the Purple Way, that Bike Easy oversees. Describe what Mardi Gras is like from the perspective of someone using a bike to get around town. Adam, let's start with you.

Adam Davies (01:30)

Sure. For me it's a little different, because I get around by bicycle or e-bike all the time anyway, so during Mardi Gras nothing really changes — I just see a bunch more bikes, which is always great. It's funny: during things like Mardi Gras or festivals, I mostly notice more cars on the road that I'm riding past. But the city really does come alive in terms of cycling during Mardi Gras. It's amazing to see, and sometimes it's the only way to get around given how the geography works.

During Mardi Gras we have something we call "the box," which is basically the parade route. It boxes in a section of mostly uptown New Orleans. If you want to cross through the box, you can only do it at designated crossing points — and you can't do it in a car, because the roads are shut to cars. But a bike lets you get in and out of the box much more easily. That's why cycling becomes very popular. Obviously, if you close half the city, traffic goes crazy — it's the only time we really get bad traffic here. But for me, a bike is a great way to get around anytime, and for Mardi Gras it's the best.

Avi Stopper (02:37)

It's an interesting paradox. On the one hand, the world descends on New Orleans, so you have a ton of additional people. But on the other hand, a significant swath of the city is shut down to traffic. So what's the net effect? Is it total chaos on the streets, or is it actually calmer than under normal circumstances?

Adam Davies (02:57)

One of my favorite things to do is go out for dinner during some of the less interesting parades. If you go down Magazine Street, it's empty — you can ride up to any restaurant, even during Mardi Gras, without a reservation, and eat. That's really fun. Most of the visitors are concentrated around the French Quarter and CBD area, and they'll walk to where they need to go. A lot of people use rideshare or taxis too.

One thing I always found interesting: because the parade route runs along St. Charles Avenue, which is one of the streetcar lines, the streetcar doesn't run during Mardi Gras. So that's another reason it can be hard to get around. But people find a way. The CBD — the main downtown area — does get very busy, but we manage around it.

Avi Stopper (03:46)

It should be noted that for Mardi Gras this year, Adam dressed up as what I can only describe as "Bike Streets Man" — a costume that prominently featured a bike map. It was quite special. David, I want to kick it over to you. Describe the Purple Way campaign that Bike Easy runs during Mardi Gras. What's that all about?

David Meza (04:05)

Yeah. People in other cities are probably familiar with the concept of a greenway — we have one here, the Lafitte Greenway, that runs up and down the city and connects a lot of things. Purple, gold, and green are the colors of Mardi Gras, so we decided to start a Purple Way. Essentially, during Mardi Gras and festival season, it's a set of suggested routes — very similar to what Bike Streets does. Not necessarily physical infrastructure, though if that's there, great. It's really about low-stress connectors: ways to get to the greenway, ways to get to the different parades and navigate through them.

When you're on a bike and you need to get in or out of the box, or across the parade route, there are designated crossing areas that make it easier than fighting through the crowd. So we highlight those and recommend very specific routes.

Avi Stopper (05:09)

There's nothing like a good map to unlock a complex situation, right?

David Meza (05:13)

Absolutely. And we have one right now for Jazz Fest, as festival season is starting — not as large a version, but it's there.

Avi Stopper (05:21)

David, let's zoom out and talk more broadly about the state of the bike movement in New Orleans. Generally speaking, how would you describe the state of affairs?

David Meza (05:32)

It's a nuanced question. When you talk to people who bike and enjoy biking, there's a lot of love for it — it's easy in a lot of senses. Where it gets difficult is the lack of support from local politicians, the city, and the state, and dealing with cars — which I think every community is used to.

Here, it can feel like there's less progress, less willingness to install infrastructure. DC is battling to keep bike lanes from being removed, but for a long time I believe we were the only city actively removing protected bike lanes. Then Baltimore started, and I'm sure a few others around the country have since.

But the city is super flat. Everything is accessible by bike. We're landlocked in an interesting way by the waterways around us, so honestly the most difficult thing is getting over either the river or the Industrial Canal. For the most part, to live your life — groceries, errands, all those things — you really wouldn't have to leave the city limits. Geographically, it's very well set up for biking.

And one of the reasons I moved to New Orleans 13 years ago: when I came to visit, everybody on the street wants to interact with you — you smile and wave at your neighbors. That connection of being outside, riding your bike, actually seeing people and giving them a nod or a wave — I think it holds a very special significance here.

Avi Stopper (07:25)

That's one of the reasons so many of us love getting around by bike — you actually see and interact with folks. And I appreciate you acknowledging the unique geography of New Orleans. It's the first time we've ever added a ferry to the low-stress Bike Streets map. We actually had to do additional development work to allow a ferry route to be an allowable route type.

I want to talk about some specific setbacks. I gather that on MacArthur Boulevard and Newton Street, there were protected bike lanes that got ripped out. Can you describe the background for those conflicts and what went down? It's a tremendous amount of work to get those things built, and a huge setback to have them removed. What was the flashpoint, and how did we end up not prevailing there?

David Meza (08:23)

This was during a time when we were seeing a lot of investment — a lot of grants available at the federal level to install protected bikeways and push for complete streets. We had a good amount of momentum. And, as in too many of these stories, during one of our biggest Mardi Gras parades — Endymion — a drunk driver decided to go speeding down a bike lane that was just paint on the ground. He ended up killing two people and seriously injuring four or more. That rallied a lot of people.

We went to city council, got the Complete Streets ordinance passed, and did feasibility studies with the city — installing temporary bike lanes all over the city just to test things out: Do we want contraflow options? How do we feel about lanes alongside the neutral ground? All kinds of projects like that. All of that ended up changing the culture and culminating in the city and the Department of Public Works installing protected bike lanes on the West Bank — the side of the city across the Mississippi. That's why we have that ferry integral to the bike maps here.

But the West Bank is a part of the city that sees itself as a little separate from the rest. As we were arguing to city council and begging them not to remove these bike lanes, a lot of residents were saying: these are different over here, you shouldn't be bringing us things we don't already have.

We ended up going to several city council meetings. It got framed as if Bike Easy had installed the bike lanes ourselves. We didn't really have support from the previous administration, and the project spanned multiple administrations and council members. We had incumbent council members and brand-new members who hadn't been informed of the history — and they accused us of installing the lanes without talking to people about them.

It seemed to me that we were arguing the safety of our people — trying to protect lives — and they were arguing aesthetics, and not wanting to have to park in their driveways because chestnuts would fall on their cars. Those were arguments we actually heard. We heard people say, "Well, I rode there as a child and I didn't die." Ultimately they passed a resolution that removed those bike lanes and said the city could never again put protected bike lanes on four named streets. And it passed unanimously, which was very disheartening to see.

Avi Stopper (11:19)

Rough story. Am I mistaken that as part of this they also passed a permanent ban on bollards or flex posts?

David Meza (11:30)

I think just on those specific named streets, yeah.

Avi Stopper (11:33)

I see — so those streets basically have a weird conservation-easement type of restriction stating they can never be built on in any incremental way other than as car infrastructure.

David Meza (11:46)

Yeah, absolutely.

Avi Stopper (11:48)

So Adam, when you and the board members are sitting around licking your wounds over these painful losses — and we certainly don't give up; these setbacks are part of it — how are you thinking about strategy and ways to circumvent that kind of intense bikelash?

Adam Davies (12:16)

The West Bank example is one of the things you've written about on your blog — the classic question of political capital. The decision to start the whole bike lane project over there was more practical than political. There was a lot of FEMA road work still going on in the city on the East Bank, but not as much on the West Bank, so the thinking was: okay, we'll start there as a pilot project. You had the classic public meetings, and then a couple of years later, the posts actually start going into the road — and by then people have either forgotten or never heard about it.

Think about it: when was the last time you went to, or even heard about, a public meeting on something happening on your street? Most people don't hear about these things, and then they only notice when it's actually on the ground. So that was part of what happened there.

In terms of strategy going forward — that was a setback on the West Bank, but there's been some pretty great stuff happening on the East Bank. The Lafitte Greenway is actually a recent development — it only opened in 2017 — and it's spawned other projects. A couple of my favorite bike lanes have come in since. You can see them all on Bike Streets. A.P. Tureaud Avenue, for example, has a lane aligned along the neutral ground side.

We currently have federal grants in progress, though we've just had a change in administration, so some departments have been restructured. But there are good things happening. There's an RFP out from the city right now to build a protected bike lane downtown, in the French Quarter and CBD. Hopefully we'll get a proper protected lane on one of those corridors that runs all the way across; there are designs and questions being worked out around that right now. At the same time, we have a Safe Streets for All initiative — again, federally funded — happening concurrently.

Bike Easy is the organization that's there to represent all the cyclists in the city. I personally can't go to a transportation committee meeting at 10 o'clock on a Tuesday. But our executive director and David can be there. That's the whole point — we chip in every month so they have a salary to show up and represent us. At the transportation committee meeting a couple of weeks ago, we had a full docket of items. Not just protected infrastructure — we also had a Safe Streets for All resolution unanimously approved by the city council, which is amazing. That involved a couple of years of study to identify particular streets that are dangerous and need additional infrastructure for everyone: cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers alike.

Avi Stopper (14:54)

David, on a couple of occasions we've referenced the federal government's involvement in these projects. To what degree is this still related to Katrina? You mentioned FEMA a moment ago. Katrina was 21 years ago now — does it still loom large in the redevelopment of New Orleans? Are some of these projects still holdovers from that?

David Meza (15:17)

There's still lots of work to be done, that's for certain. You still see blight carried over from Hurricane Katrina, and so much infrastructure that still needs to be rebuilt has been on the docket since then.

You mentioned it was 21 years ago. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of our FEMA grants were meant to last 20 years. So what came up in the news was all the millions of dollars in federal funding we lost last year because it wasn't used within that 20-year window. There's certainly lots of work to be done, and we did lose a lot of money simply for not getting it done in time.

Avi Stopper (16:05)

So the city had 20 years to use Hurricane Katrina relief funds — millions of dollars already earmarked for New Orleans — and ultimately some of it didn't get used because the city wasn't able to move quickly enough to develop plans, run community engagement, and so on. Is that why those funds were burned?

David Meza (16:27)

Yeah, and we're seeing that with a lot of city projects. At the end of the last mayoral term, our city was running at such a significant deficit that for a few months they didn't think they could pay city employees through the end of the year. So it's an ongoing thing here. It's the common notion of bureaucracy everywhere — I was listening to one of your podcasts: if they wanted to get something done, they could, but there are so many mechanisms where they can just drag their feet. The fact that we lose out on so much money, for projects we know we desperately need, is painful.

Avi Stopper (16:57)

As I said at the top, the projects we're working on in cities across the country have both nuances and universalities. Some things unique to New Orleans are certainly the Katrina funding dynamics. And I can honestly say that, as a reason to push back on a protected bike lane, I have never actually heard anyone cite chestnuts falling on their cars. So that's new. I'm not sure I have a solution to that one.

But Adam, I want to get back to this issue of public meetings, which it sounds like you've identified as a real vulnerability in the process — and I feel the same way. That's one of those universal challenges. Have you developed any mechanisms in your work for improving how you approach public meetings, to mitigate the reality that only a tiny percentage of the population actually shows up? This is a gigantic existential risk to a project: a project might be a go, and then a few years later it's not a go because some people are angry they didn't know about the meetings. We've all heard that a million times. Any techniques or methodologies you've developed to manage that risk?

Adam Davies (18:29)

Some of Bike Easy's work has been around leafleting. Sometimes the city has effectively passed the buck to us — saying that we, as an advocacy organization, should go knock on doors. And we have done that. For these projects, we've gone around the community to say: here's what the city is putting in, and here's how it's going to help protect cyclists and keep everyone safe.

That road I mentioned, A.P. Tureaud Avenue, was one of those examples. We got in there, told everyone what was happening, made sure the communication was very clear, and heard people's concerns.

From the city's point of view, A.P. Tureaud was an interesting case because they wanted a road diet — it was a two-lane road and they wanted to reduce it to one lane to slow speeding. Often the bike infrastructure comes about precisely because people are speeding down two-way roads and the city wants to calm traffic. So that was the real goal, and a protected bike lane was the means. I'm never going to turn down a bike lane.

When the city went out to residents, they heard worries — mostly about parking. "Can I still park next to my driveway?" Some people don't have a driveway and wouldn't be able to park next to their house. So the city's solution was to make it a left-aligned bike lane down the middle, alongside what we call the neutral ground — the median. I think that's great. I don't have statistics to back it up, only my anecdotal riding experience, but especially on an e-bike going 20-plus miles an hour, I'm constantly worried about the door zone in a painted bike lane. A flex-post lane alongside the neutral ground avoids that. I think it's a good example of working with a community to iterate on a design and arrive at something good.

Beyond that, it's really about getting more community engagement at the start of the process and getting everyone to agree early. Once you've done that, it's quite hard for anyone else to come along later and change people's minds.

Avi Stopper (20:28)

And what does that look like in practical terms? Crews of folks going out, flyering neighborhoods, QR codes pointing people to websites — that kind of thing?

David Meza (20:39)

Yeah. I'll say, it's been a while since the city has given us a heads-up with ample time — A.P. Tureaud was the last big one. But typically, here's how it works: we work with the city, they tell us where something is going to be installed, and we come up with our own materials. We try to get approval, which often comes back with a quick edit since they have to route it through so many departments. They give us the final design, and by that point we've already put out a call to volunteers. We pull up Google Maps and outline the blocks the project is adjacent to — and if we have enough volunteers, we'll canvass a wider radius around it.

We have people knock on doors and walk residents through the whole rundown, with answers to common questions and city contacts for any concerns. And some interactions need more — so I'll be on site, or our executive director will, for the tough questions. If parking spots are going to be removed, I try to sign up for that part. I'll go canvass those blocks myself so I can have those harder conversations.

Then, separately, we're trying to get the word out about the community meetings — and we do. But the people who hear from us are people already invested and interested in improving biking in the city, so we tend to get a good turnout from them. The backlash, though, comes from people saying, "We never heard about this." And it's like — yeah, because our comms only reach people who already know about us. We'd love it if everybody signed up for our email list, but we're only getting to the people already in the loop.

Avi Stopper (22:47)

That's always been one of the big challenges with advocacy — getting beyond that inner circle of folks who are already tuned in. The door-knocking is fascinating. David, I'm inclined to role-play this a little, but you can just describe how it goes. You knock on someone's door, and a parking spot is going to be removed in front of their house. How does that conversation go? How do you approach it?

David Meza (23:16)

The last time I did it, I volunteered for exactly that — the folks losing their parking spots. This was on a street called Miró, a one-way street that adjoins Galvez, which has a bike lane heading downriver. This project would head upriver. Anybody who's seen it knows the two lanes are so narrow that everybody basically parks up on the sidewalk — fully pulled over — because the parking spots aren't large enough, and even with no cars parked, you can't really drive two cars side by side down those narrow lanes.

I know that area well because I frequent it, so when I went down there, I was able to tell people: you don't want to park on your lawn anymore, right? Aren't you getting tired of that? You see so many cars with their side mirrors knocked off because of exactly this. The street had parking on one side but not the other, and this treatment was going to move parking from one side to the other.

So I'd say: "You've gotten to park in front of your house this whole time. Wouldn't it be nice for your neighbors to get a turn?" Not everyone loved that framing — but honestly, I got a lot of people saying, "Yeah, we want to see the cars slow down. Our cars are getting hit out here. If this is going to slow down traffic, we want to see it. We know it's not safe on this street."

Avi Stopper (24:58)

My eyes light up at that — I'm so glad you mentioned it. I think this is one of the biggest opportunities for advocacy to find alignment with people who aren't already in the tent with us. There's a tremendous amount of mutual agreement about high-speed through traffic on streets like that. So it sounds like that framing is really compelling.

David Meza (25:02)

Yeah.

Avi Stopper (25:24)

I want to set this up as a kind of point and counterpoint. When you think about the setbacks on MacArthur and Newton, where protected bike lanes were removed — and Adam, you referenced the greenway earlier — why would you say the Lafitte Greenway has been such a successful project, an asset that's really embraced and loved by the community, in contrast with some of these projects that have been less well received? Some reasons might be self-evident, but I'm curious why that particular project succeeded, and whether there are lessons we can apply to the next versions of MacArthur and Newton — in New Orleans and in cities across the country.

Adam Davies (26:07)

The Greenway was built on top of disused train tracks. It's a very easy sell: here's this empty space just sitting around — would you like to turn it into a park? That's a popular thing. There was a really cool movement behind it: a group originally got together and started hiking the disused tracks every year to raise awareness — "let's turn this into something beautiful."

We had things like special economic zones around the Greenway to encourage businesses to develop, with more mixed-use zoning. Coffee shops, bagel shops, brew pubs have popped up. So it's a really exciting piece of mixed-use infrastructure that's actually led to economic gains. It connects the French Quarter up to Mid-City and beyond. I'd say it's now the backbone of cycling in New Orleans.

There's always more to do — the crossings could be better. We unfortunately had someone killed at one of the crossings just a couple of weeks ago. It was the classic case: a four-lane road, one car stops and waves them across, and the other car doesn't stop. The lights there haven't been working for years. I went into the 311 records and pulled numerous tickets showing people had reported it. So there's definitely work to do to make it safe for everyone — but it's a piece of infrastructure that enables so much connectivity through the side streets. It's been really great.

Avi Stopper (27:40)

That's so compelling from an economic development standpoint: because of this new thing created in an underused location, you now have local commerce. There are always concerns — particularly in a city as socioeconomically polarized as New Orleans — about bike infrastructure and gentrification. David, I'm curious how Bike Easy has approached this in communities where making inexpensive, self-propelled transportation possible could be transformative, while staying sensitive to the needs of the people in those communities and recognizing the baggage that often comes with this type of advocacy.

David Meza (28:25)

I'm glad you brought that up — it's something I wanted to make sure to fold in when we were talking about Katrina. When Hurricane Katrina came through, it displaced so many families and residents who still haven't returned. So many long-term residents are watching their city change, not take the shape it used to, not have the same neighbors. So alongside fighting for bike lanes and complete streets — especially watching protected bike lanes come down — there's a lot of discussion about gentrification.

One of the reasons we were excited for that infrastructure coming to the West Bank first is that it's an underserved community. It's not a place that tends to get the nice, shiny infrastructure first. That's something we really try to highlight. We try to uplift everybody's stories, and we try not to use the term "cyclist." When people are being contentious about somebody riding a bike in a bike lane in New Orleans, they're not thinking about their uncle who rides his bike everywhere — because he's not a "cyclist." He's just their uncle who rides his bike everywhere.

It's something we have to be sensitive about. This is a city where we see a lot of residents leaving, a lot of turnover. But it's also very appealing, so we see a lot of people moving here for the first time — people from cities like Denver or Portland, places where they're used to biking, who say, "I love biking, I want to bike here. I knew about bike nonprofits, so I signed up to volunteer with y'all." And in those cases we want to sit down and do a good prep before we send people out to knock on doors. Ideally we have people who are local or steeped in the city. If not, we talk about the history of New Orleans a bit — why it's culturally sensitive to knock on somebody's door and say, "Hey, the city is going to change your street."

That's important. As I said, the discussion at city council had drifted toward "Bike Easy did this thing, we're never doing that again." So when we do pop-up demonstrations, we hold meetings on that strip and try to be as respectful as possible. More often than not, we're just trying to uplift what the city is going to be doing, inform people, and explain how it benefits them.

Avi Stopper (31:24)

I want to zero in on one thing you mentioned: you don't use the term "cyclist." That's interesting. I think there's a real language gap in how we talk about this movement. I find myself constantly wrestling with which terms to use. Cyclist? Biker? Bicyclist? Person who uses active transportation? What's the lexicon you've landed on — the terms you find least antagonistic, that cause the least reflexive conflict and actually bring people into a conversation?

David Meza (32:05)

I've been in this work a little while, and the general best practice I've learned — probably from PeopleForBikes, if I'm being honest — is to say "a person on a bike was killed," putting the person at the forefront. When you read a headline like "Cyclist killed in crash," it often humanizes the driver more than the person who was killed. And when people hear "cyclist," they often picture someone on a thousand-dollar bike — that's what they imagine. So especially when you're talking about someone losing their life, it's worth asking: was that person a "cyclist," or were they just riding their bike? There are definitely people who identify as cyclists, and that's absolutely valid. But when communicating, I'll go with "person on a bike."

Avi Stopper (33:11)

Adam, I want to jump over to you. One of the fascinating, unique challenges of making a low-stress bike map in New Orleans has been the condition of the streets themselves — the quality, or lack thereof. "Disrepair" is maybe a gentle term for it. Describe what it's like to ride a random street in New Orleans, and what you've done to help us identify what we call in the Bike Streets vernacular the "best available network" — those chill, quiet streets that let you make the network connections you need. There's a very interesting layer to this in New Orleans: the roughness of the actual riding surface.

Adam Davies (33:54)

It depends where you are in the city. Uptown is a good example. Say you're trying to get from the French Quarter, or even further down in the Bywater, up toward uptown — we navigate by the river here, so we say "upriver" and "downriver," and uptown is upriver. From that area, you've got a couple of nice main thoroughfares: St. Charles, which is mostly smooth for the most part — though there's a big stretch where it gets really bumpy and you actually lose the old painted-on bike lane. Resurfacing that road has been on the docket for years. And you've got Magazine Street, which is also quite smooth. So the main streets are okay most of the time.

But if you're trying to take a quiet street, it gets tricky. You can ride down a perfectly smooth block, then hit the next block and the road is — hard to describe — just patchwork: potholes, partially filled patches, some scattered gravel. So when I'm building out the route for Bike Streets uptown, two roads — Baronne and Carondelet, which are higher up, further from the river — cover it pretty well and stay smooth throughout.

But if you're lower down in the city trying to get from point A to point B, how do you find a route on side streets? We have great narrow roads in New Orleans — parked cars on both sides, very little space — where most cars couldn't really go more than 15 or 20 miles an hour. How do we find those roads, and specifically the smoother ones, so you're not constantly jittering around?

So I built a little tool to help with that. I've wanted to for a couple of years. There's prior academic research on it: using your phone's accelerometer to measure how bumpy a road is — potholes, general roughness. You mount your phone on your handlebar and collect that data as you ride. Previously, the math was always a bit intimidating — the raw data alone doesn't tell the picture, because things like your pedaling cadence introduce noise into the accelerometer signal. But with the advent of AI coding, I was able to take algorithms straight from research papers and turn them into working code that builds out the actual algorithm.

It's live now for multiple users. Anyone can log on to bumpyroads.org and start tracking their rides to produce roughness data. You'll also get a lovely view of New Orleans. Shout-out to Scott, my first beta user — we've started tracking some of the roads uptown. We've used that data to go back to Bike Streets and say, "That's a great side street, but it's just too bumpy — we'll have to find a different route around it." It's been an exciting development.

Avi Stopper (36:59)

So — bumpyroads.org. I didn't realize you'd actually published this. I was riding on a bumpy road in Denver yesterday, thinking: this is a road they recently resurfaced, and they did it very poorly. I submitted a 311 request, they went out and checked it, and said it's totally fine — but it's objectively very shoddy work. This is going to equip me with the data to actually demonstrate that.

I've been referring to it as the "bump-o-meter." Just so folks can visualize what this produces: as Adam rides around New Orleans with the bump-o-meter active, it produces a map with little pings where the accelerometer evaluates the smoothness of the surface. If it's good, it shows up as a green box on the map; if it's decent, yellow; if it's bad, red. In the construction of a low-stress map, this has created a lot of interesting new challenges — compounded by the fact that so many of these chill, community-style low-stress routes in New Orleans are on one-way streets with no provision for contraflow bicycle traffic. So we have to pair them: one street going one direction, another going the other. And sometimes the street going one direction is in good shape while the one going the other direction is not. It's a set of compounding challenges, but I think we're making a lot of progress.

So, you mentioned Claude Code — and this is a pretty clumsy transition — but I want to talk about St. Claude Street. David, as I understand it, we've looked at St. Claude on a number of occasions: challenging crossings and so on. It's a pretty notorious street, and I know Bike Easy is doing a lot of work there. Describe the street, the setting, its challenges, and the vision Bike Easy has for it — plus some context on the fights you've fought, what you've won and lost, the lessons learned, and how that's informing the advocacy around St. Claude.

David Meza (39:14)

St. Claude here is a thoroughfare that starts at Elysian Fields, and it's one of the only viable options to get over the Industrial Canal that I referenced. Once you get east of Elysian Fields — though we don't really use cardinal directions here — you're splitting toward either the Lower Ninth Ward or New Orleans East. You have to make your decision there, and there are really two ways to get across. On the bike maps, we do not recommend riding the bridge to cross via St. Claude, but there is signage — from a very early grassroots campaign to get "Bikes May Use Full Lane" signs, since it's legal there. Still, it's heavily trafficked, with lots of people driving up and down it.

There's a painted bike lane, but at the very start of it — where Elysian Fields and St. Claude meet — there's a large monument. There have been numerous iterations of ghost-bike monuments there because there have been so many deaths at that intersection: semi-trucks taking out bikers, people just getting hit. It's a very poorly designed street. And right at the start of that bike lane, there are constantly cars parked in front of one of the businesses, blocking the transition. They recently put in some flex posts and those were almost immediately knocked over — I think they just replaced them.

All of this is part of our Safer St. Claude campaign. One of our previous employees, who was also a designer, made mocking up the dream of St. Claude one of her last efforts — this vision of what it could look like. We've gotten a bunch of the businesses on St. Claude on board, and a lot of city agencies involved, and done a lot of work to get people excited. But it's also a state highway, so we're hearing a lot of "the state needs to do this." And then the state says they're going to do a study. It was over a year before we even heard when the traffic study would happen. Very slow going — now we're not just dealing with one city agency, we're dealing with multiple agencies across the city and the state.

It's actually the example I use all the time when I promote Bike Streets. If you use Google Maps, it'll tell you to take St. Claude. But if you go one block over to Rampart Street, heading upriver, it's so smooth — so much calmer and easier. There are multiple music and other venues on St. Claude, so you're constantly dealing with cars pulled into the bike lane, dropping people off.

For a little more context: for a long time the saying was, if you're visiting and a local wants you to know what's really going on, "don't go to Bourbon Street, that's where the tourists are — go to Frenchmen Street." In the last 10 years or so that's shifted; now more tourists know about Frenchmen Street, so the locals are on St. Claude. You can walk between all of them, which is really nice. It's a strip that's sometimes dead but very often packed — so much activity, so many people out. And being a four-lane highway, it's hard to cross from literally one venue to another. You're kind of taking your safety into your own hands.

Avi Stopper (43:08)

I should note that in creating our low-stress New Orleans map, we've looked at that bridge over the Industrial Canal on numerous occasions. It's marked properly in OpenStreetMap because it's technically a formal bike facility — there's bike infrastructure nominally there — but we haven't made it part of the low-stress map, as you noted. We looked at ways to get over it. There's a pedestrian component to the bridge, but when you reach the west side, there's a staircase — I believe about 20 stairs — up to the bridge surface. That's not exactly optimal for someone on a cargo bike, or really any e-bike, let alone a normal acoustic bike.

Adam, one last question. I'm curious from the board perspective. A lot of advocacy involves volunteers contributing their time and skills — as you both have, in the creation of the low-stress map and bumpyroads.org. (I need to start calling it bumpyroads.org and not the bump-o-meter.) One of the things that strikes me as really promising — and as a great model for other communities — is that Bike Easy has full-time staff. There are people dedicating their professional time to this, in addition to that phalanx of volunteers. How has that been made possible? What are the funding sources behind it, and how is the board thinking about sustaining these important roles?

Adam Davies (45:04)

That's a really good question, especially in the current environment. Historically, Bike Easy has been fortunate to have good corporate sponsorship and good grants — from PeopleForBikes, for example. Around that peak time we mentioned, pre-COVID, around 2019, Bike Easy was doing quite well from those sources. We're now at a stage where we really do need more involvement from our community in terms of membership. There's no way around it: more and more, we're relying on grassroots members chipping in monthly to keep the organization represented.

Avi Stopper (45:39)

That seems to be a pretty standard theme across advocacy. What strikes me is the feast years and the famine years. For a moment in Denver, transportation advocacy funding was in great supply — I won't say everyone was flush with cash, but things were getting funded. Then funding priorities changed, and over the last year or two the availability of funding has shifted quite dramatically. So the picture keeps evolving.

Let me end, guys, with one question — one that should highlight your favorite thing about riding a bike in New Orleans. David, you first. What's your favorite thing to do on a bike here?

David Meza (46:31)

That's so hard. My answer is just: ride a bike. I try to make everything revolve around it. I started in community work — the advocacy and education side — and eventually decided I needed to become a bike mechanic, because I knew everything else about bikes. I've been a mechanic for eight years now. We have so many social rides here, like lit-up night rides, and I've had so many great times on those. But then sometimes I'm just like, "This bike is broken and I want to fix it." Starting during the pandemic, we ran a mutual aid effort to give out free bikes; it ran out of funding a while ago, but I personally gave out over a hundred bikes that I helped fix up and get to people. It's not really an answer to your question, because there are too many elements and it all just revolves around the bicycle for me.

Avi Stopper (47:23)

It's kind of a leading question, because if I'm not mistaken, you work a lot of the Bike Easy bike valets around town. Is that right?

David Meza (47:31)

Yeah, absolutely. That's my favorite. I love festivals, but at any party I'm so much happier if I have something to do and feel useful. Being set up at a festival, answering anyone's bike-related question, geeking out on their bike — that's the best.

Avi Stopper (47:51)

So the party's out back, but David's in the front yard lubing up someone's chain. You're doing the Lord's work. Adam, over to you to wrap us up. What's your favorite place to go on a bike in New Orleans?

Adam Davies (48:04)

For me, it's date night with my wife. I have an e-cargo bike, and she's not quite as confident a rider as me, so often she'd rather hop on the back and go out. We love going out — Freret Street, uptown, Mid-City, anywhere, as long as we can go by bike. If we take some nice quiet streets to get there, it changes the whole experience. We slow down, chat, look at things, wave at neighbors, point at stuff, and have a great time. So: date night with my wife on the bike — I'm happy.

Avi Stopper (48:36)

That's a great image to end on. That's the future we're trying to create for so many folks. Guys, thanks for all your work in New Orleans, and thanks for all your work on the low-stress map. It's been a pleasure to chat.

David Meza (48:47)

Yeah, thanks so much for having us, Avi.

Adam Davies (48:49)

Thanks for having us, Avi. It's been great.

Avi Stopper (48:51)

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 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.