Save Some of Our Parking Meters

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

Comments

[D]

Thanks for catching this important issue. Let's hope that bike parking doesn't become like car parking!

[Jason]

>> "So while DDOT has installed 1000 bike racks, they've also removed at least 1800 parking meters"

That sounds like a respectable ratio to me. I certainly hope your not suggesting that anytime a meter is removed the cyclist community is entitled to it being replaced by a bike rack. I can think of many street segments that currently have dozens of meters that I never see a bike chained to.

[Washcycle]

No. Not every meter needs to be replaced by a bike rack. But when the bike plan came out we recognized a shortage of bike parking. So if that's a respectable ratio for you, then the last nine years have been about staying exactly where we were.