Plus, I could keep my bike safely locked all day and not worry about it being missing when I leave in the evening.

Sure, there are a couple of yellow stencils on the ground that mean "Hey, cars, there might be a bike at some point" but until I start seeing bike lanes that stretch for an entire street rather than running for 5-10m each side of an intersection (there is a big green bike box on Adelaide St, though) I'm not going to be convinced that this is going to signal a cycling renaissance in Brisbane.

The BCC's "Brisbane 2020" document shows a target modal share for bicycle trips at an underwhelming 5%. It's been at 4% for the last few years and was at one point 5% until they started converting bike lanes into shared lanes (bike lanes which one can legally drive and even park in) and building massive road projects which disrupt commuting routes.

I'd rather the Brisbane City Council offer incentives to companies and building owners who provide end of trip facilities for cyclists in their buildings. Brisbane's CBD may not be as big as New York's but there are plenty of places that are a bike ride's distance away from the cycling centre that don't have access to end of trip facilities.

What's more, the pricing is very expensive. This won't be used by regular commuters but by people who have decided they're going to try riding a bike to the CBD. Yes, it's possible to spend $33 on parking but that's in a private garage in a shopping centre. A lot of people who drive to the city have a spot provided for them by their place of work. That's okay, though, because the BCC and Queensland State Government are more concerned with soundbites and the appearance of being proactive on progressive issues than actually doing something.

Cycle2City might have cost $7million but there are a whole bunch of major road tunnels being built and planned which will cost in the billions of dollars (perhaps going into the tens of billions). This is still a car city.

Gee, you'd think they were trying to open a business in NYC!

The cost of real estate in NY makes every hour of delay prior to opening and revenue coming in an absolute killer.

http://www.chicagobikestation.com/services.htm

I thought of this 15-plus years ago, and even studied it closely to see if it would work. It looked possible, given the commercial real estate bust at the time. In my concept the service would have a monthly fee and receive a close to store (in those pre-business casual days) suits, to free up closet space in the home.

Unfortuantely, there is nothing in the zoning resolution such a service could qualify as other than a health club, which would require that space be rented for a multi-month environmental review process and a seven month ULURP process so the facility could prove it wasn't a house of prostitution (don't ask). That killed it financially -- the initial cost before space could even be renovated, and the risk of being screwed by a community board and stuck indebted for a lease with no prospect of revenue, made it unworkable.

But I worked at City Planning at the time. Now in the private sector, I say just self-certify and lie and call it a dry cleaning establishment with accessory bike storage and showers. When it comes to zoning, after all, everyone lies.