Design Comp Winner Envisions Neighborhood Bike-Share for Red Hook

The bike loft at the Smith-9th Street station designed by competition winner Jonathan Rule.

The Forum for Urban Design announced the winner of its Red Hook bicycle plan competition Monday night, awarding top honors to Brooklyn native Jonathan Rule. The competition sought out ideas to make transit-poor Red Hook the city's most bikeable neighborhood, asking entrants to lay out bike routes and design a bike parking "loft" for the Smith-9th Street subway station.

Rule's winning entry includes more than a dozen bike rental "nodes" sponsored by local businesses -- a proposal that could be described as a neighborhood bike-share network. His bike loft design, less attention-grabbing than the massive, F train-encircling wheel proposed by runner-up HOK Sport, gets points for feasibility.

What happens to the winning design now? Forum director Lisa Chamberlain hopes the competition entries rub off on jury members from DOT and City Planning, reports The Architect's Newspaper. Optimistic readers will note that there is extra time to incorporate some of Rule's ideas: The MTA recently pushed back a planned renovation of the Smith-9th Street station from 2010 to 2011.