The Rio Grande Street protected bike lane in Austin, Tex.

One of the most interesting transformations in the media world right now is the fact that instead of making a name for themselves by buying TV and newspaper ads that pay other people to do great reporting and writing, companies are increasingly doing the great reporting and writing themselves, in their own name.

I've never seen a better example of this phoenomenon than this longform piece by the Traffic Safety Store, an online retailer of construction signs, traffic cones and safety vests, about the American movement to build protected bike lanes. Here's one characteristically thoughtful passage:

In order to maintain population growth, cities will need to diffuse...

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John Stokes, director of risk management for The Jefferson hotel, on M Street before bike improvements.

Eventually, everyone redesigning city streets runs into the same problem: small businesses rarely support changes to the roads that bring them customers.

This isn't because the people who speak for businesses are callous or irrational (despite strong evidence that patrons arriving by bike are often more profitable than those arriving by car). Most businesses tend to resist neighborhood changes for a very simple reason: their businesses are profitable.

For a business, every change to your surroundings introduces risk. And when you're already turning a profit, what's the point of risk?

Face disagreements, don't deny them

So...

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