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A new concept in parking: Bike corrals
UPDATED 12:05 pm to include cost of each corral.
One of my pet peeves as a cyclist is riding to a shop or restaurant only to discover there’s no place to park my bike.
When it happens, I make a point of mentioning it to a manager. (Hello Maudie’s on Lake Austin Boulevard — please get a bike rack!)
I like to patronize places that accommodate cyclists. Happily, the city of Austin is taking note.
Earlier this year, Beerland on Red River Street asked the city to help it respond to an increased demand for bicycle parking.
The city suggested several options, including the never-tried-in-Austin idea of bicycle corrals.
It’s a simple concept: The business and property owners agree to exchange a parking space in front of their building for a corral, installed by the city.
Each corral costs between $2,000 and $2,500, including materials, says Jesse Duncan with the city’s Bicycle Parking Program.
In July, crews installed the first corral in front of Beerland. The first night, the corral was filled to its 14 bike capacity. (Yay bikes!)
“We wanted to get one on the ground, and then let the concept catch on,” says Nadia Barrera, bicycle and pedestrian project coordinator for the city of Austin’s Public Works’ Neighborhood Connectivity division, which partnered with the Austin Transportation Department’s Parking Enterprise program to put in the corral.
A flurry of requests for more bike corrals soon followed.
The city has since installed three more corrals — one at Fourth Street and Lavaca, another at Rio Grande Street near Sixth Street, and a third at Red River at 10th streets.
Four more are planned — one each at 600 Onion in East Austin (The Brixton), 1308 E. Sixth Street (Rio Rita), 1618 E. Sixth Street (Liberty), and across from the Metro Rail stop on Fourth Street between Trinity and Neches streets.
The corrals vary in size, holding between 12 and 16 bikes each.
More may be installed in the future.
“We want to try to meet the demand,” Barrera says. “These corrals are largely being installed in areas that don’t have adequate vehicle or bicycle parking, and so they are a great solution. Newer developments are required to have the sufficient bicycle parking per code, so the demand will most likely be defined by the businesses in older developments.”
Businesses that are interested in getting a bike corral should contact Jesse Duncan at Jesse.Duncan@austintexas.gov.
(The photo above by Michael Knox shows a corral outside Halcyon Coffee. The photo below by Jesse Duncan shows the corral near Momo’s.)
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment Categories: cycling
Comments
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By wise guy
November 8, 2011 12:53 PM | Link to this
Good idea. Now if they can tell bikers to stop at Stop signs.
By Clark
November 8, 2011 2:18 PM | Link to this
Those look like regular bike racks to me.
Can you offer a little more detailed explanation as to why these “never-tried-in-Austin idea of bicycle corrals” are any different than your run-of-the-mill bike rack that have been in Austin for decades?
By Pam LeBlanc
November 8, 2011 2:45 PM | Link to this
Hi Clark, it’s Pam here. What’s different is the concept of putting a bunch of bike racks all together in what was once a motor vehicle parking spot.
By Jeff
November 9, 2011 1:26 PM | Link to this
Good to see the next 3 of these are coming to the East side! There are more bikers over here than you can shake a stick at. Glad I found this story pinned to my neighborhood at loku.com.
By Jeff
November 9, 2011 1:31 PM | Link to this
Good to see the next 3 of these are coming to the East side! There are more bikers over here than you can shake a stick at. Glad I found this article on loku.com
By Robin Levitt
November 12, 2011 11:58 AM | Link to this
Here in San Francisco we’ve had bike corrals for several years now and they are very popular with merchants and bicyclists alike. Now regarding that comment about cyclists stopping at stop signs. We hear that sort of nonsense here too. How about we do the same for car drivers—there won’t be any car parking until all drivers obey all traffic laws. It’s silly. Stop signs, as well as traffic signals, were invented in response to automobiles. Bikes and cars are inherently different. Cars are more dangerous, can reach greater speeds, have more mass, etc. From a bicyclist’s perspective, loosing precious momentum to stop and build up that momentum again is something to be avoided. In Idaho they realize this. There for bicyclists, stop signs are like a yield sign and a red light is like a stop sign. It makes sense.