Tremendous point, Aaron, great post! Bicycle parking should be on the street, not the sidewalk. Walking and bicycling should be encouraged by public policy at every instance, at the expense of motoring, if necessary, for too many reasons to go into.

I was recently riding the rails on the other side of the Hudson, where New Jersey Transit has put easily identifiable and standardized bike racks at many if not all of the stations I passed on the Gladstone Branch. On a nice weekend day I saw a good number of people getting off the train and onto their bikes, and vice versa. It is nice to see people in the suburbs finding auto-free mobility, and a public agency that is working to encourage that.

Bike Stations are a really attractive idea, and they'd probably work well in a place like New York, where it makes sense to pay a resonable price for secure parking.

There is a non-profit organization called Bikestation® that operates bike stations on the West Coast and, soon, in Washington DC. The Millenium Park facility is a lot more spectular that the ones in BART stations in California (it helps to have a bike-enthusiast Mayor, I guess), but there are lots of examples out there of more prosaic bike stations that could be propagated around New York.

Of course, everything is harder in New York City, but I think bike stations would be worth the effort.