Bicycle stuff

1.  Bike racks at transit stations.  WMATA, the DC area transit system, has been significantly adding to bike parking at transit stations that already have a lot of people arriving by bike.  This is at Brookland station.  (Now they don't control the land under the bridge, but if the racks had been installed under the bridge, they would have had some protection from weather.)




2. Maintenance on DC's Metropolitan Branch Trail.  Broken tree branches were removed and I saw a mower trimming weeds.




3.  Better bike parking in commercial and residential buildings.  While in the "bicycle facilities systems integration" business I am working with others to build and expand I want to deal with "big" projects and concepts like bike sharing, electric biking, etc., at the same time we deal with "bread and butter" issues of working with mixed use developments and multiunit housing projects to develop and install better bike parking.  Ideally our contact would be done during the project design phase (and even then, I wish we could deal with developers even earlier, because by the time they get to us, certain kinds of creative solutions get precluded by decisions they have already made), but we're fine with retrofitting as well.

(This blog entry on bike parking, "Best (or at least better) practices in bike parking and bicycle facilities implementation," is partly an indirect analysis of our experience consulting on a very large mixed use development in DC.)

These are before and after photos from the CityVista condominiums in Downtown DC.  The previous rack set up wasn't with the kind of racks that are recommended, making locking to the rack very difficult.  Because this is residential parking, lockers weren't installed, because people tend to store related bicycle equipment, including helmets, in their apartments.  The cage is locked, so only people who have registered their bikes have access to the room, reducing theft problems.   (We'll see if they'll be willing to install air pumps and bike repair stands in future phases.)

The double stack racks in this room aren't hydraulic.  While hydraulic racks (like the ones in the Bikestation) cost more, I know I will be emphatic in recommending hydraulic racks in the future, because it can be difficult for many people (seniors, women, smaller people, me) to lift the bikes up to the second level.

They are going to be testing a slight charge for bike parking.  It will be interesting to see what the response is to that.  People who agree to use the second level of the decked parking should get a discount.