Monday, April 16, 2012

cost of bike stands



From roomie on campus:

The latest Uline catalog arrived at work. Uline supplies the things you need to keep a store going, like tape, garbage cans, trolleys and bike racks. Prices quoted are for three or more.

Grid racks single sided: small $310

large $520

Grid racks double sided: small $355

large $580

Wave racks 3 loop $370

5 loop $$475

It seems that bike racks are not bank breakers, but they are non-trivial.

------

D - still a deal compared to parking lots for CARS:

http://postcarboncities.net/node/190 (2007)

Seamons said with the cost of putting in a parking lot jumping from around $1.10 per square foot (in late 2005) to around $2 today.

D - I noticed there are wayyyy more on-street parking lots uptown than there are bike stands. Why? The 'car is king' - it is the mantra of our city (and highway and zoning) design. The 2-lane-each-way layout for cars, needed for on-street parallel parking, marginalizes both pedestrians and bicycles. (Once stores put out street signs - necessary in part due to trees blocking their store signs, they say) things, can get positively cramped. Those very on-street parallel-parking spots in turn would compete with where bike stands get placed. Here is an idea: during the light rail rebot -

1) lose the single bike stands crammed between pedestrian and sidewalk (now that I think about it, those were not shown on the future uptown conceptual art...)
2) convert most existing parallel on-street parking with pick-up/ drop-off zones only (change the angle on the plant patches to indicate a non-parallel drive-in solution. Ditto for pulling out.)
3) now we only need to convert a few of those old parking spots to bike racks to ensure as many bike spots as for cars. Voila!

1 comment:

dino snider said...

Driving on Victoria St. in Kitchener yesterday, I re-imagined the street. It is singularly inhospitable to both pedestrians and bikes. It has 2 lanes each way and a central both-way turning lane. If idiots don't try to cruise in the passing lane, the turning lane is not needed at all. I imagined Victoria with decent sidewalks on at least 1 side all the way out of town. And with bike lanes BOTH WAYS. Nice place to put snow in winter- also prob on King!