BikePortland: Editorial: When it comes to family biking, size matters. Families use bikeways and streets differently than individual riders and even other grouped riders. How can we plan bicycle-related street upgrades to better accommodate family cycling?
Wall Street Journal: Surface Improvements. The New York City Department of Transportation did a great thing when it reallocated street space on Broadway to improve conditions for pedestrians, tourists, residents, and bicyclists. The eight month experiment is now permanent and the City is holding a competition to replace the semi-temporary facilities (epoxy gravel, discount store seating) with more permanent furniture.
Photo: Families in Portland, Oregon, ride together to a nearby event on a recent weekend. Photo by Jonathan Maus.
The purpose of the map is to show the difference in distribution between 2008 and 2009.
This post, though, is all about the graphic above. A lengthy conversation has begun in the comments on the Flickr page. I want more people to get talking about why 2008 might look the way it does, and why 2009 looks the way it does. Perhaps you need a little background on 2009: I made sure to visit the most underserved Wards you see in 2008 and ensure they receive new bike racks in 2009.
A big question is why people in those areas aren’t asking for bike racks. Does no one there ride a bike to the store? Or maybe they do but don’t know how to request a bike rack or know the purpose of one? Maybe they got a bike stolen and need some tips on proper locking.
Those are all questions I want my project to answer – and I’m working hard 20 hours per week to answer them! But I want more questions. I want ideas that point me to look in new directions. If you don’t like my response, tell me.
Bike parking is almost always mentioned in nationwide bike plans as a necessary way to complete the urban bicycling network. Mia Birk, “famous” bicycle planner, and principal at Alta Planning and Design in Portland, Oregon, says that bike parking is part of “the tool kit for successful bicycle infrastructure in cities.” Another Portland entity is aware of equity: BikePortland.org.
My master’s project involves a discussion about equity. Equity of bike parking distribution is the main focus of my project.
I picked up some great books at my school’s library. Here are some selected quotes (many of which I’ll use in the project’s paper).
“Transportation improvements distribute nonuniformly over space, implying that they affect diverse populations disproportionately” (Berechman).
“Geography defines the contours of the equity analysis in two important ways. First, since investment in transportation infrastructure is geographically specific, there is inherent competition and conflict between places” (Hodge).
The “costs and benefits of transportation policies may take place in different time periods” (Bae and Mayeres). For example, “mega projects are often built with excess capacity aimed at satisfying future needs. Such a pattern imposes inequitable intergenerational transfers, favoring the future rather than the present generations” (Berechman).
“Indirect benefits…represent real impacts that probably benefit some people more than others. It is exceedingly difficult, however, to trace through the benefit stream of these broad impacts” (Hodge).
And my favorite: ”Transportation is an unusual public service in that it is not consumed for its own sake but, rather, as a means to another end. Thus, the value of the service depends primarily on how well it provides access to other places” (Hodge).
My professor last semester said the same thing, actually, and then we had a huge discussion trying figure out situations where this isn’t true. The only thing our class (well, the professor himself) could come up with was joyriding (driving aimlessly in a car). But is joyriding really transportation? The trip origin and destination are the same and the trip has no purpose.
I thought of the transportation system at Walt Disney World, but I eventually withdrew my support – although the goal of that system is to make it easy for guests to spend more money, the system has a legitimate role in giving access to places inside and outside the “pay area.”
Sources
Bae, Chang-Hee Christine and Inge Mayeres. “Transportation and Equity.” Donaghy, Kieran P, Stefan Poppelreuter and George Rudinger. Social Dimensions of Sustainable Transport: Transatlantic Perspectives. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2005. 164-192.
Berechman, Joseph. The Evaluation of Transportation Investment Projects. New York City: Routledge, 2009.
Hodge, David C. “My Fair Share: Equity Issues In Urban Transportation.” The Geography of Urban Transportation. Ed. Susan Hanson. Second. New York City: Guilford Press, 1995.
I’m working on my master’s project about bike parking distribution and equity in Chicago and while working on a section in the paper, I decided to get some help from readers. Many transportation projects are measured on predicted changes like trip travel time savings or trip cost savings (I give two examples below the photo).
My question is this: What are a bike parking installation’s measurable benefits to a traveler or a community?
Photo: Portland has installed 40 on-street bike parking “corrals” since 2004. What does a traveler or community gain from this bike rack installation? Photo by Kyle Gradinger.
To figure equity (fairness) for these project types, you measure these impacts for different groups (often high, medium, and low income), either in the alternatives analysis, or project selection phases. So, converting a lane on a highway to charge tolls for the lane’s users will have a certain benefit for many trips: a lower trip time. A new bus route may be convenient enough for some travelers to switch from driving to taking the bus, possibly reducing their trip cost.
Not every concept, skill or tool can be further and further simplified. Does anything really take just 3 steps?
1. Set it, 2. Forget it, 3. No third step! (This article is about bike parking, not Ron Popeil’s Showtime Rotisserie!)
I believe I can simplify bike parking. Here are my two rules to have successful and well-used bike parking:
1. Put bike parking as close to the front door as physically possible. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen bicycle riders use a substandard sign pole or tree instead of a high-quality bike rack because the bike rack was an additional 20 feet from the front door. UPDATE: As Dave Reid points out in the comments below, close parking increases security.
The bike parking in this photo sits only 20 feet away from the front door to a popular Chicago, Illinois, restaurant.
2. Choose the right bike rack. How do you know? Give bicycle riders a bike rack that’s easy to use and secure (i.e. don’t let the bike rack be the weak point in the bicycle’s security).
Six u-racks (also known as inverted-u, or staple racks) line the sidewalk in front of Kuma’s Corner in Chicago, Illinois.
Soon after the Senate signed off yesterday on a $150 billion package of tax extenders and unemployment benefits that was promoted as a job-creation measure -- a bill that lacked dedicated new funding for transportation -- Democrats on the House education and labor committee were releasing their own jobs legislation. The House proposal [...] […]
You might have seen it making the rounds over the last couple of days -- the new Mercedes ad in which a bike messenger challenges a driver in one of the company's luxury vehicles to a race from Harlem to the Fulton Ferry landing in Brooklyn. There are many irritating things about [...] […]
A collection of assignments I turned in to professors at UIC.
CTA bus operators should not strike
The assignment: Attached is a press clip from the Chicago Sun-Times on November 5, 2009, with the headline, "Bus driver strike over layoffs an 'option'." Also attached is an arbitrators ruling establishing the provisions of the current contract. Do you think the CTA unions should strike over the issue of ...
![Array](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4059/4293325285_8343290d42_m.jpg "I submitted this to the University of Illinois at Chicago Graduate School's contest, "Image of Research." The purpose of the map is to show the difference in distribution between 2008 and 2009.
All of the data to produce this map is freely available at the Chicago Department of Transportation Bicycle Parking Program Public Interface (wow, long!). The URL is:
<a href=\"http://www.chicagobikes.org/bikeparking\" rel=\"nofollow\">www.chicagobikes.org/bikeparking</a> - easy to remember!
The Chicago Tribune's RedEye used the data from that website to create a similar map about which to write an article.
My project, "Underserved Wards," has been mentioned at several meetings of the Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Council. <a href=\"http://bike2015plan.org/mbac\" rel=\"nofollow\">Read the meeting minutes</a>.
In October 2009, <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesbondsv/4039121730/\">I posted a similar map</a>. The new map is up-to-date and slightly better designed. The map graphics themselves would be slightly higher quality if I had ArcGIS at home. The original vector PDF files are at work and I didn't have access to them at the time I submitted this map. I created all the text and the new legend in Adobe Illustrator.")
![Array](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2380/2247301061_23c57fdef2_m.jpg "Portland has begun to implement in-street bicycle parking throughout the city. For every car parking space removed, there are at least eight spaces created for bicycles. By placing bike parking in the street, the sidewalk is kept clear for pedestrians. In Portland, business owners are increasingly requesting that the city install in-street bicycle parking in front of their stores.
One potential flaw in the Portland model is that it is difficult to keep the in-street "corral" clean because street-sweeping vehicles are unable to reach the curb. In New York City, one "in-street" bicycle parking facility was constructed by raising the bike parking space to the level of the sidewalk so that street-sweepers could reach the curb - which is now on the outside of the corral.")
