Parking shortage downtown; a bike parking shortage
Last Thursday I spotted a bike in front of the Gateway One building (701 Market). The bike was chained to a tree. With the exception of Washington Ave (West of 9th) and a few other spots, downtown St. Louis has no places to park bikes. Considerable effort goes into creating bike trails, paths & lanes yet places to secure bikes once the user has arrived don’t receive attention. We’ve lost far too many buildings to create surface & structured parking for an increasing number of automobiles.
The public rights-of-way can accommodate both bike parking and more automobile parking. We need to freeze the creation of new spaces for autos on private land and focus on using the public streets (road + sidewalks) to provide bike parking throughout the central business district.
– Steve Patterson
Just an FYI: Visitors of Gateway One on bike can park on the first level of the garage for free. There IS a bike rack there.
The bike rack in the first level of the garage is a rather shoddy rack. It's a standard grid-style bike rack that's placed incredibly close to a wall, which completely removes the possibility of putting your front tire over the rack, and therefore makes a u-bolt lock useless.
Simple inverted U shaped racks on every other corner or so work really well in several cities I have visited. Larger, hidden racks in parking garages are great for commuters but not for shoppers and visitors.
Exactly, the bicycle explorer just wants to quickly lock their bike and pop into places.
The St. Louis Regional Bicycle Federation is working on this very issue. Our Bicycle Parking Demonstration Project is currently on hold pending further instructions from MoDOT. Check out our webiste: http://stlbikefed.org/index.php?option=com_cont….
These simple, decorative bike racks will soon be popping up throughout the city. Furthermore, we are in the beginning stages of writing a bike parking ordinance for the City of St. Louis in collaboration with BoA President Lewis Reid.
Stay tuned! It's an exciting to time to be a biker!