NYC DOT Prepares for 12,000 Parking Meter-to-Bike Rack Conversions

Photo: Joanna Oltman Smith

The Post reported some good news this morning: NYC DOT has contracted with Louis Barbato Landscaping to make 12,000 bike racks that can be affixed to defunct single-space parking meter poles.

A few years ago, when DOT started phasing out single-space meters en masse and replacing them with Muni meters, it seemed like there was no plan to replace these de facto bike parking spaces. But since DOT has been quick on its feet to repurpose the old meters, thousands of them are going to be upgraded into bike racks.

DOT has retrofitted defunct parking meters as bike parking neighborhood by neighborhood over the past few years — accounting for about 200 new bike racks, according to the Post. With this bulk purchase, it looks like the bike rack conversions are going to scale up significantly.

For comparison, the new bike rack order far exceeds the total number of CityRacks in NYC right now, which is about 8,500. And as Gothamist points out, it’s double the number of parking meter conversions DOT was planning for about a year ago. At the same time, there were about 80,000 single-space meters before the Muni meter conversion started, so most of the old parking meters aren’t going to be maintained as bike parking.

  • Anonymous

    I really dislike these. Its so hard to lock more then one bike to these. 

  • Anonymous

    In comparison, Chicago has 10,042 public bike racks installed and Los Angeles has a paltry 4,000.

    Tokyo, with a population of 12 million people and only 45 miles miles of bike lanes and paths, has over 800,000 bicycle parking spaces. It has a bicycle modal share of 16.5%.

  • guest

    @red_greenlight1 yes but maybe since there will be so many of them it will help solve that problem anyway? and they’ll be close together, since the parking meters were often in clumps.

  • Nice heavy welded construction.  Better than the bolt on versions in other towns.

  • Doestr7153

    The racks look great.  However, could a useable bike rack/hitch/locking post be created by simply drilling a 1.5 inch hole in the existing post?  This hole could accomodate many cable locks, ulocks, and chains.  Bicycle riders could use the appropriate locking device to fit this hole.

    DLO St. Cloud  MN

  • Parkeon

    NYC SHOULD REMOVE ALL PARKEON METERS THEY ARE A POOR EXCUSE OF A COMPANY. PORTRAY THEMSELVES AS AS AMERICANS BUT REALITY THEY ARE NOT MADE IN USA AND A BUNCH OF CROOKS

  • EcoAdvocate

    and these are close to the price of staple/inverted-U bike racks, seen as standard. If you can pay the same price for 2 parking spaces, why create 1? The location is a concern as there may not be much sidewalk space in certain areas and in areas where there is such space, it may be less desirable to encourage people to stand near/park their bike to cars that may be zooming into parking spaces.

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