bike parking

I recently got this excellent question about parking a cargo bike on a residential street's parking.

Post and ring bike parking is lacking in many heavily cycled parts of Toronto. The City of Toronto was once in the forefront of supplying short-term parking for cyclists and this may help explain why so many people bike despite the poor cycling infrastructure otherwise.

We've got to hold onto the parking we've got and push for more. Currently the City is slow to re-install the parking removed when sidewalks are reconstructed (or for other construction). And they seem slow to put in enough parking otherwise.

Here's a neat website, SeeClickFix, that allows people to post issues with their city and to get crowd-support. If people mark down where they think bike parking is critical, use the keywords "bike parking" or "post and ring", or vote on an existing issue then we can gather all this information to send to councillors and staff.

It's clear that there's more demand for parking than is being met. If the city doesn't want cyclists to lock to gas meters, trees or fences then we want them to take bike parking seriously.

Try it out! And while you're at it also submit your suggestion directly to the City through their online suggestion form. It would be good if they also get flooded with requests.

A reader contacted me to get my advice on retrieving her bike that had been swept up by the City in its yearly round up of abandoned bikes parked at post and rings throughout the city. My reply is below:

The new giant Kensington sign is really nice! Just look at that bike parking! And it looks like a big bike chain. It's really useful.

According to the May edition of the City's Cyclometer newsletter, the G20 security zone will require that all post and rings will be removed 2 weeks before the event and installed afterwards.

Tess Kalinowski of The Toronto Star claims that providing bike infrastructure through transit is expensive. GO Transit is putting in secured and sheltered parking throughout the system. The TTC is putting in bus bike racks on its entire fleet. The price comes out in the range of a couple thousand per spot. Tess gives some "shocking" numbers, but fails to put them in the context of the alternative - the cost of parking a bulky car:

Hal tells us how to properly lock our bikes. Is bike theft so bad in NYC that even the crappiest bikes have to have chains locking their seats? This is getting out of hand.