The AP has a story about how the unintended consequence of transitioning to multispace meters; namely the reduction in bike parking.
Bicycle advocates from Philadelphia
to Chicago to Oakland, Calif., are pushing to have defunct meters
preserved or converted to specially designed, two-bike racks -- before
they get pulled up for good. And many cities are listening.
"After
all, the U-lock was invented to secure a bike to a parking meter pole,"
said Robert Raburn, executive director of the East Bay Bike Coalition,
which pushed to get meter poles converted to bike racks in Oakland and
other California cities.
This is not a new problem. DC started the switchover in 2006. At that time, WABA brought up the issue with DDOT. DDOT asked the contractor if they would be interested in installing bike racks as they removed meters and the contractor said "no thanks" and DDOT said "OK", and that was that. So while DDOT has installed 1000 bike racks, they've also removed at least 1800 parking meters, with plans to replace the remaining 15,000 meters. That's a lot of bike parking to replace.
Other cities are dealing with this better. For example, Philadelphia is simply not removing the most useful parking meters
Philadelphia officials have been
receptive to bicyclists' concerns. In the mayor's office of
transportation, an intern has been sent around the city to survey which
meters are most frequently used by bicyclists, said Andrew Stober,
director of strategic initiatives.
"There is a pretty clear best practice: Don't tear out your meter poles," Stober said.
Some cities have simply kept some defunct meters in place for bikers.
Others have converted them to two bike racks by putting a metal ring on
the poles, allowing for two bikes to be locked to each meter; that
costs about $150 plus installation for each rack.
DDOT doesn't want to do the lollipop thing because the poles aren't exactly where they want the bike rack to go. So in their mind they'll have to pay once to convert it to a lollipop and then again to install the inverted U. Fine, why not just leave some of the poles (with covered meters) until you come back to do the inverted U's?
In Chicago, a city where bicycle commuting is popular and 3 percent of
daily trips are taken by bicycle, advocates have persuaded the city to
leave one out of every six of the traditional parking meters -- about
4,000 in total -- to be used for bike parking. right now, many are covered with green canvas bags denoting them as bike parking.
That is a great idea. Why aren't we doing that?
In Oakland, where about 5,000 meters have been removed, the city
promised to preserve a minimum of two meter posts per block face.
Even smaller cities like Arlington, Va., Buffalo,
N.Y., and Sacramento, Calif., have responded to the voices of cyclists
and preserved many of the old poles as they modernized meter parking.
Oakland? We're getting outclassed by Oakland? At least we aren't alone.
New York has about 6,800 bike racks
and plans to add another 5,000 over the next three years -- in addition
to adding 200 miles of bike lanes.
But
over the past several years, the city has removed about 10,000 meters
-- and advocates bemoan the fact that the city doesn't seem anxious to
keep or convert the old meter poles.
C'mon DC, we're less than 10% into this, now is the time to change course. Let's save some of the parking meters on each block.
Officials in Philadelphia and
other cities say it's worth trying to keep or convert meters: It will
likely come down to a matter of cost and how many meters can be
preserved.
"This is about recycling an existing asset," Stober said.
Who knows, 60 years from now, people might look at the remaining parking meters the way we view the old call boxes.
Photo by moment of inertia
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