Thanks a lot.
Tag: bike parking
Bike parking is simple
I created a website a couple months ago where my intention is to create a single place where people can get good advice on installing bike parking wherever it’s needed. The advice includes what kind of bike rack to choose and where to put it.
Visit Simple Bike Parking – Helping make bike parking a simple affair.
Distance is the key to effective and usable bike parking. Notice the bike racks in the foreground – no one’s using them after the one’s next to the train station entrance were installed (by me, actually).
The website’s not even closer to being finished. Steven Can Plan, now GRID, and my part-time work doing bike parking consulting with Active Transportation Alliance for Cook County schools has taken priority. It’s also meant as a “calling card” for people to hire me to consult them on their bike parking needs.
My first iPhone app – Request a bike rack
Here’s a video preview of my first iOS app that will hopefully, in the end, allow you to request a bike rack in Chicago based on where you and your device are currently standing.
I don’t know if it will ever hit the Apple App Store because Apple requires developers to pay a $99 fee each year. I’m surely not going to pay this. It will be able to run on jailbroken iOS devices and it will work on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
The code is based on my Bike Crash Portal website that asks permission to use your location (given automatically through HTML5 and the computer’s own location software). A fork of this project may include a mobile-optimized website that allows you to request a bike rack; again, based on your current location.
The purpose of this is to eliminate the need to know the address of where you want to request a bike rack. Oftentimes a person will arrive at their destination and not find any bike racks. Open the app, hit “Share my location” when the app loads and then tap submit. The Chicago Bicycle Parking Program (hopefully) will receive your request.
Bike to work week now, but what about next week?
Groupon mentioned on its blog that 126 employees rode to their Chicago office Monday.
Since the city has a goal of having 5% of trips under 5 miles by bicycle*, how do we ensure those same 126 employees ride their bike next week? Or tomorrow even!
With more of this:
A protected bike lane on Kinzie Street. These have been shown to reduce the number of crashes as well as slow down car traffic.
And some of this:
A family riding their bikes on Prospect Park West in Brooklyn, New York City. This bikeway is unique because it has both directions and is protected from traffic by parked cars. Photo by Elizabeth Press.
We’ll also need some left turn bays for bicyclists:
This will help cyclists make safer left turns across intersections. As seen in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Then we’ll see this:
Happy people riding together in our neighborhoods. With lights at night, for sure.
Oh, we’ll probably need additional bike parking, like this station at Amsterdam Zuid station (think Chicago’s Union Station or New York City’s Penn Station):
Free, underground, double-decker bike parking.
*We’re probably somewhere between 0.5% and 1.5% (of trips under 5 miles by bike). No data’s actually available on this; not for the baseline year of 2006 and most likely will not be available for the goal year, 2015.
That was easy: Wicker Park-Bucktown SSA approves on-street bike parking installation money
Read the discussion about this on The Chainlink.
I went to the Wicker Park-Bucktown Special Service Area (SSA) #33 commission meeting on Wednesday night. Jason Tinkey joined me. I had a lot of questions before going in about the on-street bike parking I wrote about yesterday and many were answered in the proceedings. At the end I asked my final questions. Today’s meeting was about passing a motion, which passed unanimously, to approve funding $4,000 to pay CDOT for the installation.
Here’s the story:
A Dero Downtown rack will be installed in front of the Flat Iron Arts Building in a parallel parking space that is not currently metered. The bike rack is designed to store 12 bicycles. The Dero Downtown rack looks identical to Chicago’s Plaza racks but has slightly different geometry. It has square tubing and is of high quality; it can stand alone or be anchored easily, even to asphalt – I definitely approve this rack choice.
It will be purchased by the SSA* and donated to the Chicago Department of Transportation which has agreed to assume liability. I don’t know what the installation includes, but the cost, $4,000, seems quite high! The SSA has a target installation month of June 2011. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, may have its second by the end of May.
Orange lines indicate approximate location – could be north or south of the fire hydrant. These are the non-metered parking spaces.
The Dero Downtown rack looks just like this Plaza rack, so named because of its first appearance at Daley Plaza.
Expect to see a scene like this in Wicker Park by the end of summer 2011.
*The standard price for this bike rack, in 2011, is $1,584 for powder coat or galvanized, or $1,836 for thermoplastic or black rubber dip. Delivery will cost over $500. The SSA passed a motion in March 2011 (PDF) to approve $4,000 to procure the bike rack.