The city's ambitious effort to bring 500 bike parking lockers is stalled — and advocates demand that Mayor Adams keep his campaign promise of making the crucial transportation infrastructure a reality.
Transportation leaders have for decades failed to deliver secure bike enclosures at scale in the Big Appple, while other world cities have cycled laps around us. Even before he was mayor, Eric Adams endorsed the idea while vowing to break the city's "culture of can't" — but his marquee program has little to show for it.
In its most recent effort, back in May, City Hall unveiled snazzy renderings and a promise to start setting up safe bicycle storage this year. The move followed years of government officials running small-scale trials that went nowhere.
"New York must be built for people, at the density our growing city requires. These storage lockers will create many more spaces for New Yorkers commuting needs on our limited roadway," then-Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi said at the time.
DOT reps said the agency is still working on choosing a contractor, but one city insider told Streetsblog it's unclear where the holdup is.
"I'm incredibly frustrated by this ... and can't seem to get a straight answer from DOT if it's a budget issue, procurement issue or what," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Vendors applying for the program have apparently not heard updates from the agency in months, according to another person familiar with the process.
Adams and the City Council are about to head into lengthy budget negotiations, but further delays could put bike parking at the mercy of the next mayor, who might not be into it, especially if that mayor is Andrew Cuomo, feared the person with knowledge who spoke to Streetsblog.
"I just don’t think they [City Hall] are prioritizing it, and it’s in danger of being punted until the next administration," said the person with knowledge of the process. "Cuomo’s going to come along and say, ‘What’s this?’”
Time is running out to pick a company, hash out a contract, and start siting the new transportation infrastructure this year as promised, according to a former agency official.
"If you want to get something in the street in 2025, you can’t be still farting around with the contract award as the spring approaches," said Jon Orcutt, DOT's former Policy Director during the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations, who now works as the Director of Advocacy for Bike New York.
Decades of dawdling
Mayor Adams is not the first chief executive to promise, and then fail, to create secure bike parking.
As early as the Giuliani administration, the Department of City Planning recommended in a 1999 report [PDF] that officials deploy "lockers" near transit hubs to encourage more people to switch from driving to cycling.
More recent studies have shown that a lack of safe places not only reduces cycling, but also safety, and increases theft while hurting local businesses.
Some small-scale tests took hold under former Mayor Bill de Blasio and then Adams, but they didn't go anywhere.
In 2019 Brooklyn-based company Oonee first set up a bike locker outside Atlantic Terminal in 2019, which Adams boosted as Brooklyn Borough President.
Another DOT pilot the year after with the company P3GM for a handful of valet bike facilities failed after running into financial trouble.
Mayor-elect Adams stumped at an Oonee pod launch at Domino Park in Williamsburg in 2021, and cheered on the upstart company's product, while vowing to clear the bureaucratic morass holding up a larger rollout.
"Let's be unafraid to try something new. We become so stagnant as a city. We have a 'Culture of can't' and a 'Culture of failure,'" Adams said at the time. "We have a 'Culture of no' in this city. It's time to have a 'Culture of yes.'"
Within months of taking office, Adams's DOT launched a six-month bike parking pilot in 2022, posting a small Oonee pod for 29 days at a time in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. The six-bike box was a hit during the tri-boro tour, but the exercise petered out without any immediate follow-up. The company, meanwhile, found more willing municipal partners across the Hudson in Jersey City.
Oonee, which is one of the applicants for the bike parking pilot, declined to comment.
How it's done
Other metropolises have been more forward-thinking than the City that Never Sleeps. London has deployed 30,000 spaces in so-called bike hangars, including 1,000 in one borough alone.
Secure lockups are especially useful near transit stops, something more bike-friendly jurisdictions like the Netherlands have perfected.
"Creating a really large-scale network to safely lock bicycles will really unlock tremendous potential for bike use in New York City," said Eric McClure, Executive Director of StreetsPAC.
A city that takes cycling seriously must provide spaces to keep two-wheelers safe, with one-in-four households having had a bike stolen, according to Ben Furnas, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives.
"Lack of access to safe parking is a major reason people choose not to ride — but we’re still waiting for widespread secure bike parking. We're hopeful that this program can finally get off the ground this year so everyone’s bike can rest safely while you’re home, at work, buying groceries, or visiting the doctor," Furnas said in a statement.
DOT said it is taking "major steps toward launching" the network of bike parking this year, according to a recent press release, but added that the agency "expects to make a determination on these proposals submitted in the coming months."
