A reader sent in this fine example of how NOT to draw bicycle business to your ice cream shop. Lets just say that a certain ice cream shop in Brighton seems to have a problem with people on bikes spending money at their store…I seem to recall at least once in my ice cream eating journeys having to move one of these ugly little planters (one doesn’t even have a tree in for Pete’s sake) so I could park my bike up to the very nice bike racks…
The funny thing is, it looks like two people are still using the racks, and they look like kids bikes, the kind of kids that will spend money at an ice cream shop, perhaps if the planters were moves two or more kids could also park there and also spend money at the ice cream shop. Business owners in this town will fight tooth and nail to keep on street parking near their shops in the hopes of drawing in business, but often forget about the wallets that pedal in instead of drive.
With the help of Office of University Communications; we bring you our new Map of Suffolk University On-Campus Bike Parking. Very exciting stuff. While Boston was recently ranked very high on a Safer Cities survey; securing your belongings is and always will be a must in any urban setting.
This map will also be available on suffolk.edu/bikes. If you’re lost you can look and you will find the map– time after time. Save a PDF to your phone for keeps and show it to all of your friends. They will probably think you are VERY cool.
Earlier this week I saw this on Gizmodo, and today again on Treehugger. One parking space, if filled with folding bikes in their folded postion, can be packed to the count of one Douglas Adams answer: 42 bikes.
BU’s currently working on installing a ton of new bike racks all around campus. Most noteworthy and exciting so far are:
the wonderful new bike rack bars at the Guitar Center 730 Comm. Ave/General Classroom Building Parking Garage:
Which nobody realizes is actually a bike rack yet:
and the nine new hanger style racks installed in the rear parking lot of CAS, which as of this morning, had my bike and BU BIkes faculty advisor Seth’s bike locked to:
Apparently nobody realized these racks existed either as the only other bike rack crippling away behind CAS was packed:
It’s really great to see the university respond to the previous lack of bike parking, and its obvious the next step is education to let people know about all these great new racks and how to use them (you can expect more on that from us later). I do have concerns about people actually safely and conveniently accessing the rear parking lot, but I guess we’ll see how that pans out in the next few weeks when school is in full swing. And of course, I will continue to keep you all updated on new bike racks across campus as I discover them.
As it turns out, according to Boston city law, bicycles are considered vehicles, so parking a bicycle in a metered parking space is perfectly legal.
With that knowledge, Galen struck a brain-chord in thinking of starting some guerrilla on-street bike parking. Re-purposing parking spots isn’t anything new, as the global-wide existence of PARK(ing) Day will attest to, and neither is on-street bike parking, but to our knowledge it had never been done in either Newton nor Boston, so Nathan Phillips, mentor of BU Bikes and active member of Newton Bikes, ran with the idea over in Newton a few weeks ago. It was so successful that he wanted us to try it out in Boston, so last Friday, before the start of Boston’s Critical Mass ride, we did.
After paying a meter for a spot on Boylston, Nathan and I invited passing cyclists and Critical Mass riders to join us, and though only a few did actually join us, they reacted positively to our efforts, even if it was after luring them in with Clif Bars:
Eventually we moved to a second spot, and a curious Motorcyclist even joined in on our two-wheeled parking party. Before leaving, we left him with the meter ticket for the space which still had 40 minutes remaining.
Before I arrived Nathan had one confrontation with a parking meter attendant, who after leaving to report him to her supervisor never returned. One police officer told me we couldn’t leave our bikes in the space and stumbled away befuddled when I told him we actually paid the meter and that what we were doing was legal.
As far as we know, this is the first time anyone’s ever attempted any kind of on-street bike parking in Boston. Though, rumor has it that a certain bar/cafe here will soon be the first establishment to have the city convert a metered spot into on-street bike parking. I’m guessing it’ll look something like what they’ve done in Portland:
Considering said rumor, upcoming PARK(ing) day in September, and the fact that bicycles are considered vehicles under Boston law, expect to see more fun and useful re-purposing of city metered parking spots for people-friendly usage right here in Boston in the foreseeable future. And even if we weren’t the first to take over a parking space in Boston for on-street bike parking, we were certainly the first BU Bikers to do it.
If you have ever had the misfortune of getting me on the topic of on street parking (a little of my venom came out when I heard that a parking spot sold for $300,000), you will have also heard me say long and loudly that I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to see some on street bicycle parking. That is take out a parking spot and put in bike parking. Well looks like Newton has gone and done just that!
Newton is out ahead of Boston and other communities for once on biking: we had the first on-street bike parking we know of in the area, last Saturday, June 13. The event was seeded by four members of Bike Newton, who rolled up to JP Licks Ice Cream shop in Newton Centre, found an empty parking space, parked our bikes and paid the meter. Other bikers, single and families, joined the space; the number of bikes grew to more than a dozen, at which point the adjacent spot opened up and we took that one too. This photo shows a couple of interesting things: bikes parked in pedestrian spaces, indicating lack of bike parking; some bikers riding on the sidewalk, rather than street, presumably because they felt safer on the sidewalk; and the remarkable indifference of bystanders, who treated this as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have in a metered parking spot.
Now if only we could have these for real, with real parking racks. Personally I think they should be free to encourage more people biking. Now all we need is a couple brave business owners to go to the city and request that one of their spots be removed for bike parking. If they do this they will be able to fit ten-twenty customers parked in that one space, instead of just one. If you own a cafe, with one street parking in front, having those spots be turned into bike parking, would not only give your cafe patrons a better view, but would allow many more people to visit your cafe (more bike in same spot as one car). There are several business types that would benefit from this setup, but I think food places would be the most obvious choice.
New York City is going to be getting its first bike-only parking lot, with attendant!
City officials have been trying to create more places where New Yorkers can ride their bikes safely, but finding secure places to park them is an enduring problem.
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Now, a few business executives have dreamed up a private-sector solution: the city’s first bikes-only parking lot, complete with attendant. Already, they have cleared the high hurdle of finding available space in Midtown, on West 33rd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues.
All they need is a corporation willing to pay as much as $200,000 a year to sponsor the idea.
“We’re really looking for a big number to build something quite spectacular,” said Daniel A. Biederman, president of the 34th Street Partnership. “We want this to be the premier bike parking facility in the country.”
Stonehenge Management, a developer, has offered a 2,600-square-foot lot next to an apartment building it owns on the north side of 33rd Street, Mr. Biederman said.
The partnership, which is financed by businesses and property owners in a 31-block section of Midtown, has developed a preliminary design for the lot and has ordered up a prototype of the racks it would contain, Mr. Biederman said. Initially, it would hold 100 bikes, with room to expand if there is more demand, he said.
Regular users would pay a fee, but some spaces would be free, for short-term use by visitors to the neighborhood. Those fees will depend on how much the partnership can raise from a sponsor, Mr. Biederman said.(via)
Come on Boston, we should be leading the way in things like this, not limping along behind the pack.
Would you pay to park your bike in a place you knew it wasn’t likely to be stolen? What if it was pretty cheap?
