How Decent Bike Parking Could Revolutionize American Cities

Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) penned an article in Slate last week (with the original title as the title of this post) on bicycle parking.

If car parking is often overshadowed in traffic talk, bicycle parking is even more obscure.

To a large extent as a response to the recent passing in NYC of the "Bicycle Access Bill" by a 46-1 City Council Vote. This bill attempts, with several limitations, to "requires the operators of certain New York City office buildings to allow the employees and visitors of their commercial tenants to enter the building with a bicycle pursuant to" that building's "Bicycle Access Plan."  The DC BAC's legislative committee is working on a similar bill for DC, which is important since Vanderbilt points out.

Surveys have shown that the leading deterrent to potential bicycle commuters is lack of a safe, secure parking spot on the other end.

He writes about the various new ideas for bike parking from zoning laws, to the bicycle parking tower (I recommend this link), to Biceburg. He even mentions the BikeStation at Union Station (and links to a certain blog we all know).

Even in bicycle-friendly cities parking is a problem

In its 2004 "Traffic and Environment Plan," the city of Copenhagen, noting that bike parking wasn't even assessed until 2001 (when it was found there were 2,900 spaces in the historic center), declared: "Only one third of cyclists are satisfied with their options for parking their bicycles and other road users, particularly walkers, are increasingly annoyed by parked cycles."

And he finishes with so-called "bicycle pollution"

Space has its limits, and in a design competition to upgrade Vartov Square, next to Copenhagen's City Hall—which the mayor's office notes "mainly looks like a cluttered and worn parking area"—there is a call for underground bicycle parking.

Photo by brownpau

Comments

[Forest]

Great post, and an interesting article, but I feel one very important ingredient for good bike parking has gone unmentioned: energy efficiency. The bicycle parking tower and the biceburg are cool ideas, but they must use egregious amounts of energy lifting your bike around on conveyor belts and cranes. I would favor a simpler, more practical system without moving parts, like a big room underground where people can just lock up their bikes. That would be cheaper to build, easier to maintain, and more energy efficient.

[Washcycle]

That's a good point. I guess you'd have to determine if an easy parking system like the tower will create more cyclists, in which case it might pay for itself from an energy standpoint.

[Jonas Hagen]

Check out the following video on ASCOBIKE in Brazil, the largest bicycle parking facility in the americas:

http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/ascobike/