Report on the Union Station Bicycle Station Planning Meeting

Aharon Varady reports on the last week's meeting on the Union Station Bikestation planning meeting:

I think for the presenters (DDOT and Bikestation) it went very well. When the Bikestation is constructed it will be the first such station on the East Coast.

The project is budgeted and should be implemented by June 2006. The bikestation will be built on the west side of Union Station near where the AMC Cinema sign is located. It's something of a dead zone now, so this would be a great improvement. The station would also be located adjacent to where the Metropolitan Branch Trail would be.

"Current conditions."

We were presented with three designs for the station, the differences being where on First Street the Bikestation would be located: abutting Union Station, separating two lanes of traffic on First, or farthest west on First. Jim Sebastian and others present indicated they disliked the former and of the latter two, preferred the design for the station to be between the two lanes of traffic.

Site plan alternatives.

The Bikestation will be a public/private partnership. Besides bike parking and bike rental parking, there will also be space for a bike mechanic and sale of fitness bars and the like. So bike stores like Citybikes (also present at the meeting) will probably compete with bids to get dibs on the space once the station opens. The Bikestation looks like it has plenty of potential and I was excited about it coming out of the meeting. I definitely think it will add momentum to progress on the Metropolitan Branch Trail, as well.

Aharon made scans of 8 pages of documents distributed at the meeting. They are available online here.

District of Columbia Bicycling Master Plan.

The DDOT website has been updated in the last couple days with information on this meeting. You can view two presentations from the July 20, 2005 public meeting: 1) the presentation on Bike Stations in general and 2) the presentation the conceptual design for the DC facility.

Thank you Aharon for this report!