The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Don’t fret, downtown getting bike racks
Posted on September 6, 2007
Filed Under bike racks, bikes, columns, columns 2007, urban design
Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun
Durham Rising brought a lot of people downtown on Saturday — 12,000 by some estimates. A surprising (yes, even to me) number of those folks were cyclists. So, if you walked around downtown at all that day, you surely had to step around some of their bikes. There wasn’t a lamp-post, street sign, or sapling that didn’t have a bike chained to it. Outside Bull McCabe’s, the new Irish pub replacing Jo and Joe’s, signs and lamp-posts secured two and three bikes a piece.
Where were the bike racks?
I left downtown that day feeling disgusted, and no, it wasn’t from gorging on Locopops.
The city of Durham spent more than sixteen million dollars on its Downtown Improvements project as the civic investment in re-energizing downtown. They developed a new central plaza, realigned streets, and marked pedestrian crossings with stamped brick designs. But no bike racks? I was incredulous.
Turns out, bike racks were on their way. They just weren’t installed yet.
Hopefully, you’ve been back downtown since June. As of the end of August, one city program installed bike racks downtown, and one will continue to install them throughout Durham.
First, the streetscape project did include bike racks; they simply couldn’t be installed by the Durham Rising event. Ed Venable of the City says that bike racks were installed in eight locations in July. See them outside the Professional Center, the Empowerment Center, and the CCB Plaza among other spots inside the loop.
Second, the CityRacks program secured funding from the state and federal governments to install bike racks all over Durham. Under a Congestion Mitigation for Air Quality (CMAQ — often pronounced see-mack) Improvement Program, Durham will be installing bike racks all over the city. CityRacks, as the CMAQ funded program is called, will install “inverted U” bicycle racks on city-owned property. Look for them to start popping up this fall.
There’s a common story told on many college campuses (whether myth or fact doesn’t matter) about how it was decided where sidewalks should go. It usually goes something like this. Suppose you want to lay out a campus, and you want to put in sidewalks only where the students will use them. The best way is to wait a few years to see what pathways the students wear into the lawn, and put the sidewalks there, because those are the pathways students use to get from building to building. Otherwise you’ll have sidewalks, and then you’ll have pathways across the lawn where the students actually walk.
The CityRacks program takes a similar strategy with bike racks. By letting citizens (cyclists) request where racks should go, the City ends up installing racks where they will be used.
Dale McKeel, the city’s new Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation planner, says that the first bike racks were installed downtown in August at locations selected more than a year ago. Before the 2007 year is out, a total of sixty seven racks will be installed at parks, commercial districts, museums, universities, and libraries. For those of us cyclists, that means we will no longer have to lock a bike to a No-Parking sign outside Brightleaf or Ninth St.
Piedmont Parks, Inc. of Greensboro won the $48,000 contract to install the racks, and the upside-down U design was chosen by the Durham Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission, who says this style bike rack is the most secure.
In 2008, the City Racks program will focus on installing bike racks at public schools throughout Durham. And in 2009, the public will again be invited to request bike racks at locations around Durham.
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Jim Reingruber, using Google Maps, has started a website noting all of Durham’s bike racks — at least, all the ones he can find. Check it out at http://www.durhambikeracks.com/
For the full list of all planned bike rack locations, see the pdf available at http://www.durhamnc.gov/departments/works/bikerack_form.cfm
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