This is nice, but it’s not going to get me to ride my bike to work.

What has been holding me back has never been the thought that my bike would be exposed to rain during the day, but that it is exposed to theft! I could care less about my cheap bike getting wet, but it’s a hassle if it’s stolen.

What is needed is either secure bike parking, rules forcing buildings to provide secure space for bike commuters, or some combination of both. (Streetfilms has profiled such systems in Chicago and San Francisco.)

I think it’s great PR and will help raise visibility that people do ride their bikes in this city, but it’s a very small step and won’t do much to get more people on their bikes.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but are five shelters with room for eight bikes each actually going to make a difference? Even if all 37 shelters get built, they’ll accommodate a mere 296 bikes. Wouldn’t it make more sense to choose a less luxurious design with greater capacity?

I like it! Now we’ll have to work on placing them in-street.

Worth a try. It’s important in raising the profile. Of course I’d prefer storing my bike inside the building in a secured area.

Wouldn’t angle parking be more space-efficient than this design? It’s a lot of sidewalk to store half a dozen bikes.

I disagree, Glenn. The bike parking on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg is a much better first step toward establishing space dedicated for bike parking or a bike sharing program on NYC streets. This is an advertising gimmick and nothing else.

My vote: save the sidewalk! Our city shouldn’t create permanent obstructions of public space, and surely we don’t need more ads.

This is a bone they’re throwing to us, to show they’re “with the program” and encouraging bicycling. Get real! Give us bike lanes! Give regular commuters secure parking. And don’t forget the outer boroughs!

naw, i’m impressed with this. it’s not the be-all end-all of biking infrastructure, certainly, but it’s a good step. it’s not the right way to do things *everywhere* in the city, but whatever. bike parking near transit hubs is sorely needed.

all you whiners who say you’d bike more if theft wasn’t such a problem: i’m not buying it. get a bike that doesn’t look fancy, a good lock, and never leave it on the street over night. yeah, theft is real and sucks, but don’t use it as an excuse to not ride.

I’ve had three non-fancy bikes stolen in one year. I had a darn good lock, attached them to secure posts, and I NEVER left my bikes out overnight. I rode them to work, so the bikes were on the street between the hours of 9 and 6. The bikes only cost about $50 each, but how many times can I do that?

In the future, I’ll wait to ride to work until I can park my bike inside.

How hard is it to take auto parking for bike parking? We need to keep the sidewalks as free from obstructions as possible. As someone who commuted in everyday by bike, I think this design is very flawed in many ways.

“…the city would be full of these shelters. There’d be no room to walk.”

Wow, many reactionary reactions to a long-overdue reactive project. This proposal is not perfect, but could you all pop an effexor before your bitter bizzaro comments come streaming out? And, just ride your damn bike.
Thanxxx

“Geez, only eight out of 23 comments are positive.”

Because it’s a crappy idea. It adds little or no value to anyone’s biking experience and takes up a ton of room on the sidewalk. Credit Streetsblog readers for their common sense.

“Everyone knows those bus shelters have their drawbacks (their being uniformly ugly is at the top of my list), but having several actual structures for parking”

In what meaningful sense is this a “structure
for parking a bike”? At best it’s a canopy that might keep a bike that is already dry from getting wet if a perfectly vertical rain starts after the bike is parked and before it is retrieved.

” will help all New Yorkers see that bicycling is an attractive and legitimate way to get around. Thank you, Ethan, for making this point.”

What an incredibly dumb point. It will cause the vast majority of NY’ers to exclaim “who put this goddam thing in the middle of the sidewalk?!”

“A little shed is a nice amenity for bicyclists and sure beats locking up to parking meters or signposts.”

Oh please. It makes no friggin difference what you like your bike to, as long as it (and its pieces) are still there when you get back.

“Absent a technological solution like Sabrina’s, I think that d’s choice not to commute by bike is a reasonable response to fears of theft, just as some people don’t want to park their cars overnight in sketchy neighborhoods. But I don’t think that those fears should influence the city against making more innovations like this one.”

You don’t think that allocation of resources toward a legitimate problem should get in the way of the City throwing money at a non-problem? This is not an innovation. It’s boondogle.

(It makes no friggin difference what you like your bike to, as long as it (and its pieces) are still there when you get back.)
Au contraire! This official-looking shelter (and to a lesser extent, common-and-garden sidewalk racks, too) dedicates part of the streetscape to bike parking. That is a clear message that says it’s OK to park your bike on the street.

Locking your bike to the subway kiosk, or to someone else’s private property, on the other hand, is obnoxious and self centered, and tells your fellow citizens that you don’t give a hoot about them.

Yes, I would prefer that parking be taken away from cars for bikes, but I’m not going to castigate an alternate solution either. There aren’t that many pedestrians at Jackson Ave & 50th Avenue in Queens (to mention one spot), so it seems like a good place to try out these shelters.

Jonathan: Agree with you about the current number of pedestrians at Jackson and 50th (Ave., as you say, not Street per “New York”), but that overlooks the number of residential buildings going up nearby; three, in fact, within 200 feet, with mammoth Queens West close as well. The Vernon-Jackson #7 stop is the last one in Queens before Manhattan, a desirable destination, but the fact is there’s no place in Hunter’s Point where you’re more than a few blocks from a subway station, so how many would “commute” on two wheels anyway? And, let’s face it, folks, if the city takes away metered parking spaces for cars, do you really not see the day they start charging for primo bike parking?

The Vernon-Jackson #7 stop is the last one in Queens before Manhattan, a desirable destination, but the fact is there’s no place in Hunter’s Point where you’re more than a few blocks from a subway station, so how many would “commute” on two wheels anyway?

I have to disagree with you here, Rex. Citylights may only be two blocks from the subway, but they’re long blocks, and as you go up or down the waterfront you get further from the #7 but not much closer to the E/V trains at 23rd/Ely. If I lived in the East Coast I’d definitely want it to be easy to bike to the subway.

Also, the new Hunter’s Point South development will have 5000 apartments, and will not be a very convenient walk from any stop. This particular plan is not very well-thought-out at all in terms of transportation, and it’s quite unlikely that four bike racks will be enough for the residents of 5000 apartments, but there will be demand for these racks.

Don’t want to hijack the thread with LIC trivia, but…My point about proximity in Hunter’s Point is, of course, relative, and dependent on which subway line you’d prefer. But I can’t think anyone is more than 5-10 minutes walk to some subway access–ask Upper East Side folks how good that sounds.

As for Greenpointers cycling to the #7 stop: what little attention and energy I can spend on these matters will be focused on the MTA’s near-criminal abuse of “G” train riders and neighborhoods. And that’s really the story here, anyway, isn’t it? We need every type of viable, sustainable transportation options we can get, but it’s really the 800-pound gorilla–the MTA, NYC Transit and their mismanagment of this public resource–which has to take priority in our action. That, and the Bloomberg/Doctoroff doctrine of putting people where there ain’t no trains.

I must claim ignorance when dealing with bike theft in NYC (Hey! I’m in Jersey. No secrete there.)

However, Jonathan’s comment back at #24 brings up an idea. Cars get stolen because it is an object that is by nature mobile. Same with bikes. Well if you got real problems with your bike getting stolen then maybe locking it up and taking a wheel with you could help. I know when my car was new I would take the main ignition wire with me when I parked in rough areas. Took 30 seconds to remove and now the car ain’t going nowhere under its own power. Wouldn’t stop a flat-bed just as removing the wheel wouldn’t stop a thief with a van but it’s a definite major deterrent.

Also, I recently got a Brompton folding bike for travel and for a possible commute to NYC. I never lock it up and simply take it with me into every place that I go; work, offices, music clubs, even fancy restaurants. I’ve never had an issue. Even those that were skeptical at first about letting me bring it in are easily won over when they see it fold up. (Side note: I’ve never had a bike before that caused so many total strangers to just come up to me and start conversation; even good looking women!)

As for the bike parking kiosk, I gotta’ admit that you gotta’ walk before you can run and NYC is trying to do some Olympic level sprinting with this design. I was just in Philly earlier today and there are simple, solid, but affordable (yet damn effective) inverted “U” racks everywhere. For the most part they a placed parallel to the curb where the meters go. Such a layout minimizes ped conflicts and utilizes a section of the sidewalk not regularly utilized by pedestrians. Nothing new to most of you. What was really interesting today however was that I noticed a series of 3 or more of these racks in front of a Center City church for their members (Cool!).

New York should start with a program like this first, then move on to the the fancy stuff.

This is taxpayers money going directly into the pockets of the company creating these things (Cemusa).

I wonder if the people in charge of contracting this had a kickback deal: We’ll get you to create these dumbass structures, if you give us half of your profit. Also, give me half the profit of us charging you to take them down, after everyone realizes how stupid of an idea this is. We make money, and everyone forgets it ever happened.

This is the most retarded idea I’ve ever heard, and cannot believe it was even considered over one of a million alternative ways to improving biking and raise more awareness of biking in NYC.

“Hey, let’s but big, expensive structures in the middle of sidewalks. They should hold seven.. no, EIGHT bikes, so that people can park their bike before it starts to rain, and pick up their bike after it’s done raining! I mean, what MORE could bikers want than that?? Now, the next time bikers ask for something, we can say “geeez, we already gave you super expensive and convenient buildings to block you from rain! not even cars get free parking like that! what more do you want?!?!””

“Ok, sounds good. Make sure I get a kickback and get re-elected”

“Deal.”

Smart Guy, if you look at the press release about the street-furniture contract, money goes from the vendor to the city fisc, not the other way around as you seem to think.

This cost the City NOTHING! That is the beauty of the Cemusa bus shelter contract. In fact the City is making money on it. Cemusa is responsible for installing and upkeep of the shelters and has to pay the city for the privilege of selling advertising. And we get more bike parking and a public endorsement of bicycle use as legitimate.

Get a good lock and get out and ride.

Shea and I had to opportunity to use the rack last weekend when we rode to the Greenmarket: SEE!

It was very well-designed, and it did in fact keep the vendors that are all over this block from taking up the bike parking. We even helped someone who was trying to read that bike map to see how he could ride over the GW Bridge…

That is nice; however THEFT is the issue that most concerns me. I pay for parking my bike right now just so that I don’t have to deal with coming to a rack and my bike not being there. We need more facilities with more affordable ways to storing bikes in the city. Kudos to the city for trying something. They should work with Bike communities to know our needs a little better.