We don't need bike to work week

We need more bike parking for the people who already do ride. This morning was ridiculous. Took me literally half an hour to find bike parking centered on Clark and LaSalle.  Why even put on bike to work week, or add all these new bike lanes into the city, when bike parking is so bad. Oh yeah, I forgot, bike parking doesn't make for a nice photo op for the mayor and Active trans...

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Permalink Reply by Julie Aberman (Hochstadter) on June 20, 2012 at 3:55am

amen!

Permalink Reply by Jason W on June 20, 2012 at 3:57am

Oh, I forgot to add, there were bikes parked to sucker poles EVERYWHERE! I feel sorry for those people. They probably are new bike to work people, but they won't have their bikes for long...

Permalink Reply by Joza 7 miles on June 20, 2012 at 3:59am

I would think the more people riding to work, to shop to do anything will be beneficial. 

If more riders are out and complain about the lack of infrastructure I can see the city reacting in the positive.

Talk to the Businesses you go to and the stores and ask them to have the city put in racks. 

But hey I am just a 40 something that has learned to just get on with it.

Permalink Reply by Joza 7 miles on June 20, 2012 at 4:01am

Oh I HATE sucker poles.

Permalink Reply by Melanie K on June 20, 2012 at 4:58am

I have had luck in getting bike racks installed in certain areas that were lacking sufficient bike parking by contacting both the business itself and submitting a bike rack request with the city. Less than a year later, there were bike racks installed where I had mentioned they were needed.  If there are more people requesting a need for bike racks, the more likely that more will be put in place.  So, if during bike to work week it was tough to find bike parking, put a request in or contact the businesses in the area to see if they are willing to put additional bike parking. 

Permalink Reply by Jason W on June 20, 2012 at 5:24am

Joza, carfree and surge, your logic makes no sense. Funneling more people towards a limited resource will only make the situation worse if there is no plan to significantly alleviate the problem. It shows lack of planning on the city's and AT's part. And the picture of the ribbon cutting underscores everything I am stating. That intersection had as much bike parking as any in the city. It was a waste of resources if the purpose was to improve the bike parking situation in the city. But hey, Proco and company got a nice photo op out of it, and that was probably the purpose all along...

And yeah, I've requested bike racks before. I've worked in the same office for over 2 years (3 summers) and it has never significantly changed. There is probably a need for 50-100 spaces in the area, especially considering most bike racks designed for two bikes are triple and quadruple parked. You guys send in your request and ask for that. Let me know how that works for ya...

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on June 20, 2012 at 5:47am

The bike rack situation is embarrassing in a city that "claims" it wants to be bike-friendly.  The new rack installation budget and department is WOEFULLY inadequate.  They are a year behind even in the most generous of estimates. 

It's too bad that last SOB mayor screwed us all royally with the LAZ deal.  Not only did we lose control of the auto parking situation with regards to planning and regulation (and sell it for 75 years to plug one year's budget hole -payday-loan style) but when they removed all the meters they removed the majority of the bike parking infrastructure in the city.  The new rack installation has been playing catch-up (if you can call falling further and further behind "catch-up") ever since.

Simply pathetic. 

Permalink Reply by Joza 7 miles on June 20, 2012 at 6:36am

It is one thing to rightfully complain about a lack of secure bike parking. But to suggest that we should not promote commuting by bike until enough spaces are available is absurd.

Permalink Reply by Joza 7 miles on June 20, 2012 at 6:48am

Lets hope.

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on June 20, 2012 at 6:49am

They are just under-budgeted and fixing this known situation is NOT a priority.

What is scary is that at the last MBAC meeting they were talking about plans to purchase permanently-mounted bicycle-counting kiosks around the city to COUNT bicycles gong past.  Sounds like a great idea and the lack of good data about bike ridership and mode-share numbers would be great for planning.  The only way to get data now is to physically COUNT bikes and cars and that data is pretty worthless unless you do it for every day over a number of years to build a good data set.  They don't have any good DATA for planning.

Problem is these kiosks are going to cost upward of $10,000 EACH.  Yeah, TEN GRAND.  They need good data to plan for the future but that is some expensive stuff -they are going to spend WAY more money on these big-brother counting kiosks than they are allocating to bike racks and the data is already there telling us that they don't have enough bike racks.  That's data we already have as there as the lack of parking in many areas is obvious to anyone with EYES.   -and they aren't doing squat about it.  After spending a quarter million or more on these counting kiosks are they just going to ignore that data too?  Do little or nothing to fix issues that the known data is pointing to like they ignore the bike parking problem by allocating too few resources to solving it?

Crazy...



h' said:

Agree wholeheartedly.

James BlackHeron said:

The bike rack situation is embarrassing in a city that "claims" it wants to be bike-friendly.  The new rack installation budget and department is WOEFULLY inadequate.  They are a year behind even in the most generous of estimates. 

Permalink Reply by Kevin C Dormant on June 20, 2012 at 7:10am

One of the built-in complications of the bike rack situation is that there is adequate bike parking in most places 8-9 months out of the year. The other 3-4 months, I notice a lot more bikes parked on the street, but I still park at the same rack year round. And I'm not sure where Jason is looking for parking, but my office is at Clark and Madison.

James BlackHeron said:

They are just under-budgeted and fixing this known situation is NOT a priority.

What is scary is that at the last MBAC meeting they were talking about plans to purchase permanently-mounted bicycle-counting kiosks around the city to COUNT bicycles gong past.  Sounds like a great idea and the lack of good data about bike ridership and mode-share numbers would be great for planning.  The only way to get data now is to physically COUNT bikes and cars and that data is pretty worthless unless you do it for every day over a number of years to build a good data set.  They don't have any good DATA for planning.

Problem is these kiosks are going to cost upward of $10,000 EACH.  Yeah, TEN GRAND.  They need good data to plan for the future but that is some expensive stuff -they are going to spend WAY more money on these big-brother counting kiosks than they are allocating to bike racks and the data is already there telling us that they don't have enough bike racks.  That's data we already have as there as the lack of parking in many areas is obvious to anyone with EYES.   -and they aren't doing squat about it.  After spending a quarter million or more on these counting kiosks are they just going to ignore that data too?  Do little or nothing to fix issues that the known data is pointing to like they ignore the bike parking problem by allocating too few resources to solving it?

Crazy...



h' said:

Agree wholeheartedly.

James BlackHeron said:

The bike rack situation is embarrassing in a city that "claims" it wants to be bike-friendly.  The new rack installation budget and department is WOEFULLY inadequate.  They are a year behind even in the most generous of estimates. 

Permalink Reply by Jason W on June 20, 2012 at 7:18am

I sincerely apologize for getting your name wrong, Serge. It was not intentional. I'm totally dependent on spellcheck, and Serge isn't in there.

Serge Lubomudrov said:

juson, you can't even get names straight . . . Just an observation.

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