BikeShare as community benefit and TDM

Housing Complex has a post about developers being asked to include a CaBi station (with bikes) as part off their community benefits package. It came up at the ANC 6C planning and zoning meeting where they asked the developers of a 500-unit residential complex at 250 K Street NW if they would consider including one. I think it's a great idea, and I expect to see more than a few stations paid for this way. Especially if it is something required as part of TDM requirements in the new zoning regulations. It also serves as an amenity that drives up value.

Someone should also petition the Green Building Council to add bike sharing stations as a way to get points for LEED certification.

As someone pointed out in the comments - $50,000, the cost of one station, is about the same as the cost of one underground parking space.

Comments

[mhoek]

anecdotally, I recently tried to get LEED-ND points for a CaBi station at Constitution Square in NoMa but the point was rejected because we just worked with DDOT to provide an adequate space in the streetscape as opposed to purchasing a new station outright. Given the size of the station and the requirement to avoid all utility covers, etc the coordination took a fare bit of work and redesign of the planing beds, etc.

[Richard Layman]

FWIW, if I hadn't continually testified about the failure of the 2006 comp plan draft to include Transportation Demand Management planning _requirements_, the comp plan would have never been changed to _require_ TDM planning for planned unit developments. (That was a sop to me. They still didn't agree to general requirements. Just encouragements.)

That's the reason that "community benefits" and transportation benefits can be tied together with proposals such as these.

That being said, when I was on the ANC6 planning and zoning committee, we took up the idea of encouraging developers to include car sharing spaces, although we got a lot of push back from certain developers (especially those represented by Holland & Knight). But it wasn't our idea originally. Paradigm put a space or two for carsharing on their apartment building site at 5th and Massachusetts NW, and we then used this as an example with all the other projects that came before us.