One of 45 new bike racks installed in the Hudson Square area at the request of the local BID. Photo: Hudson Square Connection

Workers in the Hudson Square area are demanding bike infrastructure and employers are helping them get it.

The Department of Transportation has installed 45 new bike racks in response to requests from the local business improvement district, the Hudson Square Connection, which covers Manhattan’s west side between Canal and Houston Streets. The 45 new bike racks are located in a roughly 20 block area, a significant expansion of bicycle parking.

In a press release, Hudson Square Connection President Ellen Baer tied the request for bike racks not only to a desire to make the neighborhood more environmentally friendly, but to demands from area employees. “We are seeing an increasing volume of people biking to work and building owners are receiving a growing number of requests to provide amenities for cyclists,” she said.

The new racks come at a what might be an especially opportune time. The local community board has requested that the city upgrade the Hudson Street bike lane, which cuts right through the area, into a parking-protected lane, a change that if implemented would make cycling a more attractive way to get around the neighborhood.

By installing eight bike racks, DOT created a “daylighting” effect, improving visibility at the intersection. The bike parking is much less intrusive than parked cars and helps everyone at the intersection see everyone else. Oh yeah, and now there are a dozen new places to park bikes without taking away any space from Smith Street’s busy sidewalks.

For another look at on-street bike parking, check out Streetfilms’ 2008 tour of Portland, Oregon’s bike corrals.

NYC DOT's screenline bike count has doubled since 2007. Full graphic available in this PDF.

The New York City Department of Transportation recorded an eight percent increase in the number of people biking into Manhattan below 50th street this year. The bike count has now doubled since 2007, when the city’s first on-street protected bike lane was installed on Ninth Avenue.

This year’s increase is less than the double-digit increases of recent years, and it appears to have been hampered by construction work on the Manhattan Bridge, which has forced cyclists to detour onto the Bowery, with all its barreling truck traffic, on inbound trips. The city released a preliminary bike count in the spring that found a bigger increase — 14 percent — before the construction detour took effect.

NYC DOT’s screenline count measures cyclists crossing the four East River bridges, the Hudson River Greenway at 50th Street, and riding the Staten Island Ferry. It’s the best hard count of cycling activity available but doesn’t capture bike trips outside the city core.

In addition to the new bike count, NYC DOT announced that it is expanding its program to convert defunct coin-slot parking meters into bike parking. The department has transmogrified 175 meters so far and plans to convert thousands more. They are currently reviewing responses to an RFP seeking to repurpose 6,000 meters as bike racks.

“Our infrastructure needs to keep pace with new demands on city streets,” transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said in a statement. “By transforming obsolete parking meters into off-the-rack bike parking, we are recycling old facilities to meet this growing need.”

An additional 6,000 bike racks would represent nearly a 50 percent increase over the current total of 13,000. While the number of racks has skyrocketed in the last few years, DOT needs to make up for the loss of tens of thousands of decommissioned parking meters that functioned as de facto bike parking spaces.

With today’s announcement, DOT seems to have hit one of the benchmarks in its Sustainable Streets strategic plan, which set out to double bicycling rates compared to 2007 levels by 2012. The next target: Tripling the 2007 baseline cycling rate by 2017.

Hint: There's no rack for the bike.

A few weeks ago muni-meters began popping up on the streets of Inwood. Naturally, this made me wonder if the city had considered turning the neighborhood’s defunct coin-op meters into bike racks.

DOT has converted discarded meter poles into racks in other parts of the city, and livable streets advocates have long noted Inwood’s lack of bike parking. According to the CityRacks map, there are 19 racks in Inwood, all of them on or within a block of Broadway. (The disappearing shelter, as far as I know, has not resurfaced north of Dyckman Street, though after it was removed DOT said it would seek another location nearby.)

We queried DOT on the possibility of Inwood meter conversions in mid-November, and again this week. We’ll update this post when we hear back.

Edison ParkFast advertises its bike parking at Hester and Centre Streets. Photo: Noah Kazis

Two years after the City Council passed the Bicycle Access to Garages law, which set aside space for bike parking in commercial garages, legislators are turning their attention back to the issue. In response to low demand for the garage spaces, a bill sponsored by Queens rep Karen Koslowitz would loosen up some of the design requirements for the bike parking spaces while maintaining the total amount of bike parking required.

A report from the Council’s Consumer Affairs Committee, chaired by Manhattan rep Dan Garodnick, lays out the current state of bike parking in garages [PDF]. The law has created 16,378 secure bike parking spaces but, according to a survey of the major garage operators, on average only 27.7 spaces are used each day. That unused space presumably has some garage operators chafing.

Koslowitz’s legislation, which received a hearing last Wednesday, wouldn’t reduce the number of bike spaces garages need to set aside. Currently, garages with more than 50 car spaces must provide one bike spot for every 10 cars, up to their first 200 car spaces. For garages with more volume than that, one bike spot is required for every 100 additional car spaces.

The Koslowitz bill would give garages more latitude in how to provide bike parking, however. A requirement that each bike be given a 2′ x 3′ x 6′ space, for example, would be eliminated, as would certain requirements meant to protect parked bikes from moving cars.

Caroline Samponaro, the director of bike advocacy for Transportation Alternatives, said she didn’t have a problem with the legislation. “The good thing about the bill is it maintains the same number of parking spots.” She said providing garage operators with some flexibility in how they provide the parking was a reasonable adjustment to a new law and that the important thing was that ample parking is still provided. “The lack of secure bike parking is one of the deterrents to people riding in New York. Parking garages can be part of that solution.”

Cost is also an ongoing concern for the Bikes in Garages law, though not one the Council is addressing. While many have cheered Edison Parking’s dollar-a-day bike parking rate, other garages have set rates so high it’s hard to imagine anyone paying them.

Photo: Jeremy Charette

…and NYC’s first bike corral fills up with a dozen bicycles faster than you can parallel park an Escalade.

Reader Jeremy Charette sends this shot from the corner of Smith Street and Sackett Street in Brooklyn, where a crew was installing what I believe to be a genuine first for NYC: on-street bike parking.

Eight bike racks are getting bolted into the blacktop in what’s currently a no-standing zone. In addition to the added convenience of the bike parking, anchoring the racks in the pavement will keep the sidewalk uncluttered and prevent illegally idling and/or parked cars from obscuring sightlines at the intersection.

The safety dividend should be significant, Jeremy writes:

Since I moved in seven years ago, I’ve seen countless car accidents at the corner of Smith and Sackett in Brooklyn. Problem is, drivers coming from Sackett Street can’t see around parked cars on the Southeast corner of the intersection, making it a blind corner. Cars tend to roll through the stop sign on Sackett Street, and at least 1 or 2 a year get t-boned by vehicles coming down Smith Street.

This year they finally put up a “no standing” sign for the two spots before the corner, but cars and trucks STILL park there!

I came out this morning to find this! They’ve painted the no parking zone, put up a curb, and are installing bike racks!

In Portland they call this on-street parking set-up a bike corral. NYC DOT has reclaimed curb space for bike parking before, but that always entailed building out the sidewalk, which is pleasant but comes at a considerable expense. This new treatment effectively preserves pedestrian space too, at a much lower cost. (There’s also a hybrid treatment at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway station, where DOT added bike parking to an epoxy-and-gravel sidewalk extension.)

It’s great to see bike corrals arrive in NYC.

Photo: Joanna Oltman Smith

Hundreds of defunct parking meters are on their way to a second life as bike racks. Reader Joanna Oltman Smith sends this photo of DOT handiwork on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, where the columns of defunct coin-slot meters have been awaiting rebirth as bike racks for some time. Muni meters took over many blocks on Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue in conjunction with the Park Smart program.

These new racks should relieve some of the pressure on the neighborhood’s bus stop poles, parking regulation poles, and conventional bike racks, which tend to swell over capacity with bicycles during times of peak usage.

More bike parking should also be coming to the Upper West Side, where 240 meters are slated for conversion to bike racks, and Madison Avenue, which is where DOT’s meters-to-bike racks project got underway in 2009.

A naked meter pole on Madison Avenue, pre-conversion. Photo: Wiley Norvell

Four hundred bike parking spots will help, but oceans of surface parking could still make the new Nets arena a traffic magnet. Image: Jonathan Barkey and the Municipal Art Society.

Gay’s report on yesterday’s media event announcing the arena’s opening date of September 28, 2012 has some sharp commentary on NYC’s media-fueled bike bashing:

On Monday I rode my bike in Brooklyn, because I live there, and because that’s what terrible people do in Brooklyn — load up their hemp backpacks with baguettes and copies of “Das Kapital” and ride their bikes everywhere, ruining civic life in New York City.

But lo, the outlaw behavior gets crazier. I rode my Satan bike in a Satanic bike lane to see the Nets.

P.J. O’Rourke take note: This is great satire.

With the opening of the 18,000-seat arena less than 18 months away and the Nets saying that it will host 200 events a year, 400 bike parking spaces will come in handy. But what about those oceans of surface parking? There must be a better way to plan for people to get to the arena than to invite thousands of car trips to one of the most transit- and bike-accessible sites in the entire city. Streetsblog will be taking a closer look at the Atlantic Yards transportation equation in the weeks ahead, so stay tuned.

In other news, we recently heard from a reader that bike owners can get a pretty good deal on monthly parking at the garage on Underhill and St. Marks. With some haggling, you might be able to work out a price that beats Edison ParkFast’s $20/month rate.

Edison ParkFast advertises its bike parking at Hester and Centre Streets. Photo: Noah Kazis

The combination of the Bicycle Access to Garages law and the market’s invisible hand are bringing cheap bike parking to locations across Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn. As of last month, every garage operated by Edison ParkFast, one of the largest parking companies in the city, is offering bike parking at the rate of $1 per day or $20 per month.

Edison was already offering bike parking at its larger garages, said Executive Vice-President for Parking Ben Feigenbaum, due to the requirements of the Bicycle Access to Garages law, passed last August. That law required all public lots with over 100 spaces to provide parking for bikes, allowing garages to set their own rates. “We attracted virtually no customers,” said Feigenbaum.

The bikes-in-garages law is set to take full effect later this year, covering all lots with 50 or more spaces — meaning every Edison lot. Rather than wait until that deadline hit, said Feigenbaum, Edison is trying to figure out how to make the economics of bike parking work now. “We need to offer low enough rates to see if people are really interested,” he explained.

So far, said Feigenbaum, “there’s been a few more people that have come out of the woodwork to park” their bikes, but most racks remain empty.

Why the low interest in what seems like a pretty good deal (especially compared to the exorbitant rates we’ve found at some garages)? It may be that potential customers haven’t learned about the offer yet. People may also be reluctant to pay for bike parking when some of the same signs advertising low prices tell cyclists that they park at their own risk. On top of that, cyclists have to bring their own locks. So even if prices are down, the added security of going to a garage isn’t as high as it could be.

This memorial to Eric Ng, killed in 2006 on the West Side Highway, is no derelict bike. Photo: richdrogpa via Flickr.

The Department of Sanitation has backed off its controversial plan to remove ghost bikes from the streets of New York, relenting to a public outcry in favor of the memorials to cyclists killed while riding. Proposed rules governing the removal of derelict bicycles released in June would have taken away even the best-maintained memorials, but the final version published on Friday [PDF] specifically carves out an exemption for ghost bikes.

Originally, Sanitation was only going to spare what it called “ghost riders” for an extra few weeks. Ghost bikes would have been removed thirty days after being tagged with a notice, compared to five days for ordinary derelict bikes. The new rules, however, include a specific exemption for (the now-properly named) ghost bikes in the definition of what counts as a derelict bike. A statement attached to the rules declares that “under these rules ghost bikes will never be deemed to be derelict.”

This is a victory almost entirely attributable to the bike activists who mobilized over the issue. The revisions were made solely “based on the written comments and the public hearing that we had,” said a spokeperson from the Sanitation Department, which received over 250 comments on the proposed rules.

The new rules also set the terms under which abandoned bikes can be removed from where they are locked. Sanitation has established five criteria to determine whether a bike is derelict. Starting October 4, the department will tag any bike attached to public property that meets three of those criteria. Seven days after getting tagged, the bike would be disposed of. If applied fairly, that could clear away truly abandoned bikes and free up space for people to park the bikes that are functional and actively used.

The criteria are:

(i)  the bicycle appears to be crushed or not usable;

(ii)  the bicycle is missing parts, other than the seat and front wheel, including, but not limited to handlebars, pedal or pedals, rear wheel and chain;

(iii)  the bicycle has flat or missing tires;

(iv)  the handlebars or pedals are damaged, or the existing forks, frames or rims are bent; or

(v)  seventy-five percent or more of the bicycle, which includes the handlebars, pedals and frames are rusted, along with any chain affixing such bicycle to public property.”

There’s one loophole to keep an eye on, though. If any bike “creates a dangerous condition by restricting vehicular or pedestrian traffic,” state the rules, it may be removed immediately, whether it’s derelict, a ghost bike, or otherwise. Whether a bike creates such a dangerous condition would generally be determined by the NYPD, said the Sanitation spokesperson.

A tipster sends this picture of one of the city’s new bike racks that, someway, somehow, got wrenched out of the pavement. We’re told that the sidewalk at Fulton Street and Rockwell Place in Brooklyn had a big chunk missing where the bike rack would have been.

After this bike rack design won a 2008 competition to replace the U-rack as the city’s standard unit of on-street bike parking, NYC DOT committed to installing 5,000 of them within three years.

I don’t know what tore this one out. Maybe a car ran up on the sidewalk and knocked it loose, or maybe someone yanked it out with their bare hands. If it was vandalism, the nice thing about this rack design is that, unlike a U-rack, ripping it out of the sidewalk doesn’t really help someone steal the bike. Still, it seems like the bolts anchoring this thing in the ground could stand to be sturdier.

If you see a busted bike rack, here’s where to report it to NYC DOT.

Though there's a rule forbidding parking bikes to objects that aren't racks, it's easy to miss unless you already know what to look for. Photos: Noah Kazis

By Hudson River Park regulations -- the park isn't run by the city Parks Department -- bikes may only be parked at a bike rack. "Bike racks are designed to have bikes locked to it; our railings and lightposts are not," explained Hudson River Park spokesman David Katz. "This was an iron railing. It's going to get scratched. It's going to get scuffed."

According to Katz, the bikes had been locked to the sea wall railing near Leroy Street for around two and a half hours when park enforcement officials decided they had to go. Katz claims that staff asked nearby park users, including those in the dog run and at Pier 40's athletic fields, if the bikes were theirs. When no one claimed them, they cut through the locks and took them to the park headquarters inside Pier 40. "Since they are in violation of park regulations," added Katz, "they are summonsed."

Ultimately, all ten bikes were reclaimed, said Katz. The owners had all been on a cruise together on the nearby Queen of Hearts boat.

The Gothamist report pointed a finger at the park for not notifying the cyclists that their property was about to be seized. In particular, the lack of signs announcing the rule was seen to make the seizure unfair. Katz claimed that the rule was prominently displayed. "There are large signs at every entrance to the park," he said, including the bike parking rule along with other regulations. 

The truth is somewhere in between. I visited the park and there are, in fact, posted signs at every entrance. I found five within a minute or two walk of the Queen of Hearts' dock. They aren't large, however. You wouldn't see the bike rule unless you were looking for it. Had the cyclists sought out the parking regulations, they would have found them, but it would have been very easy not to have noticed the rule at all.

Another complicating factor is the availability of bike racks. There's a small rack immediately across the path from the Queen of Hearts, which Katz says was empty when the bikes were confiscated. The rack doesn't have room for ten bikes, though. A block further south, there is ample bike parking, but it's inside a Pier 40 walkway, not visible from most angles.

Those difficulties suggest that Hudson River Park should be doing more to accommodate cyclists, said Transportation Alternatives' Noah Budnick. "If that's the rule they want to promulgate," he said, "they have to go above and beyond to publicize it. And if they're going to take people's bikes, they should at least have a tagging policy in place." After all, said Budnick, the greenway is the busiest bike path in the country and each one of those riders is a Hudson River Park customer. As shown on Saturday, current efforts aren't enough. 

When the MTA service cuts took effect last month, 570 bus stops around the city suddenly became a collective no-man's land. Buses weren't pulling up to the curb anymore, creating an irresistible vacuum for motorists. If you belong to a neighborhood message board or listserve, you may have come across a few dispatches from car owners salivating over the prospect of more parking.

Maybe it's impolitic to discuss how to use this space while the pain of the service cuts still stings, but the NYPD isn't waiting to manage all that real estate: They've stopped ticketing motorists for parking in the bus stops. Acres of space that used to accommodate transit riders are now de facto parking spots.

We reported in May that this is mostly what the city has in mind anyway. DOT's plan is to turn most bus stops into parking spaces, or convert them to loading zones where deemed necessary. At a meeting of Brooklyn Community Board 6 last night, a DOT representative reiterated the department's intention to primarily use the bus stops for storing private vehicles. He also expressed some openness to installing bike parking in the bus shelters, but not on the street itself.

While the loading zones will help reduce double-parking, it looks like we're still on track for a significant redistribution of public space that won't benefit the 55.7 percent of New York households which don't own a car. 

It doesn't have to end up this way. In San Francisco, the city took some highly visible steps to convert defunct bus stops to non-automotive uses. Some bus stops were re-purposed as bike corrals, with secure parking for six to twelve bikes at each stop. Elsewhere, they used the free space to shuffle around the street's parking spaces and install a "parklet," a temporary public plaza built along the curb.

This is an important time to act on the idea, exemplified by Summer Streets, that streets form the bulk of the city's public space and belong to everyone. Here are a few treatments that would make life better for New York's car-free majority:

• At dangerous intersections, shift the parking spaces around so that the pedestrian crossings are daylighted, allowing drivers and peds to see each other better
• If a BID or other group can maintain the space, set it off with planters and add some seating
• On streets with lots of foot traffic, designate official zones for food vendors
• We said it before but it just makes so much sense: bike corrals

DOT has figured out how to do some pretty ingenious things with newly available curbside space, and really, the only equitable way to divide up these stops would be to devote most of them to car-free uses. New Yorkers who don't own cars shouldn't be shut out of using our old bus stops.

The Bicycle Access to Garages Law is in effect, but just because you can park your bike in a garage, doesn't mean you want to. At many garages, the prices are absurdly high. At 62nd and Columbus, a month of bike parking costs $175. One garage at Bowery and Canal charges $211.19 for a month and asks cyclists to pay the same daily rates as car owners.

A Streetsblog reader sent along the above photo of a relative bargain: $4.59 for a day of parking, $22.96 for a month. This garage also doesn't charge the illegally inflated 18.375 percent tax rate, which is supposed to be applied only to motor vehicle parking. 

The garage is in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn (on St. Marks Avenue, between Underhill and Vanderbilt, to be precise), so we're not talking about a big commuter destination. While the comparison to Manhattan garages might not be apples-to-apples, this could still be an attractive bike storage service for someone who lives in a fourth floor walk-up or needs all the space they can get inside their home (it sure beats the prices at StorageMart).

It also shows that bike parking prices can range by at least a factor of ten. That drives home the need for some way to compare bike prices. There are already websites that offer this service for car parking. With such a wide range of prices in this new market for bike parking, it could be an even greater service for cyclists. 

Starting June 27, 570 bus stops across New York City could disappear. Unless Congress delivers an 11th hour reprieve -- still a distinct possibility -- service cuts will axe or reroute dozens of bus lines, raising the question of what to do with all the curbside real estate at these potentially defunct stops.

Any plan to re-purpose bus stops will be provisional, since the cuts might be averted or service could be restored at a later date. But at least one other city forced to cope with bus cuts has used its defunct stops to promote sustainable transportation and improve the quality of public space.

In San Francisco's Mission District, five bus stops were converted to bike corrals, each of which has parking for between six and twelve bikes. In another location, the city made room for a "parklet," a temporary public plaza, by shifting two parking spaces from down the street into the freed-up bus stop space.

Here in New York City, it looks like DOT's contingency plan does not include re-purposing street space for pedestrian or bike improvements.

At most closed-down bus stops, said an agency spokesperson, the curbside area will simply take on the regulations of the adjoining area. If the street has parking along the curb, for example, the bus stop will become parking. In a few cases, the bus stop might be used for something like a truck loading zone instead.

Advocates are calling for DOT to think creatively about this new space, if the need arises. "Every neighborhood is different and there's definitely no cookie-cutter solution for all of these bus stops," said Transportation Alternatives' Wiley Norvell, but in many neighborhoods, the curbside area could be used "to create green space or open space for leisure and recreation." While TA's goal is to ultimately see bus service restored, said Norvell, "we really hope that the city is using the biggest possible toolbox when reprogramming the space."

A "parklet" in San Francisco, built on two former parking spaces that were moved to the site of a former bus stop. Photo: Matthew Roth.

The location of every building with an official bicycle access plan. Image: City Council [PDF]

The law requires commercial buildings with freight elevators to allow cyclists entry to the building, as long as their employer consents to have bikes in the workplace. Surveys have repeatedly shown that New Yorkers who bike cite the lack of secure parking as the number one reason they don't ride to work.

According to DOT statistics, 346 tenants have filed formal requests for their buildings to create bike access plans. Many of those requests are still pending, with the buildings within the deadline for compliance. That's a level of participation "beyond my wildest expectations," said Council Member Gale Brewer, one of the law's sponsors. 

The real impact of the Bike Access Law might be far greater, said Transportation Alternatives' Wiley Norvell. "For every one of the requests that makes its way to the DOT," he said, "there are many more instances of buildings that are implementing bike access policies of their own accord." Watching City Council pass such a pro-cycling law was an impetus, he argued, for many building managers and landlords to better accommodate cyclists. 

For example, the press conference announcing these numbers this morning -- headlined by Brewer, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and transportation chair Jimmy Vacca -- was held in front of Seven World Trade Center, where developer Larry Silverstein installed a slew of bike amenities without the prompt of a formal request for bicycle access. Another landlord with a major portfolio of office buildings, Trinity Real Estate, has also implemented bike amenities in many of its properties. 

Although the law is an important and innovative way to provide bike parking in New York City, there are still a few holes. In some buildings, for instance, freight elevators shut down at 5:00 PM, leaving cyclists unable to bring their bike out of their office after work. Brewer noted that bike access plans are concentrated in Manhattan, and especially Midtown. "I'm hoping that in other parts of the city, other people will be able to do this too," she said. 

There aren't any plans to revise the law just yet, according to Brewer and Norvell. "We're starting to get a sense of ways to expand or improve it, but we're only five months in," said Norvell. "It needs some room to breathe." He expects a second look at the law to come in a year or two.

Washington, D.C.'s Bikestation is one of the sleeker and more fully-featured bike parking facilities that Streetfilms has ever seen. Located at Union Station, the Bikestation provides secure parking for more than a hundred bicycles, offers repair, rentals, lockers, and a changing room. Members get 24/7 access.

Have a look and see how D.C. has made their biggest transit hub even more multi-modal with top-notch bike parking.