Thursday, November 5, 2009

Trading Bike Racks for Parking Spaces in Berkley

My dandy little town of Berkley, Michigan just had an article in the local little paper, Woodward Talk, entitled "Berkley aims to promote greater bike usage at city businesses".  This sounds like it will be all about new bike lanes and bike racks, right?  Sounds encouraging, right??

Well, almost.  The article is actually about how the council voted DOWN an amendment to the bicycling parking requirements for Berkley businesses and requested that the planning commission rewrite the ordinance.  From there it goes on to point out that...
...the original ordinance would have allowed existing establishments to reduce their number of required off-street parking spaces. By counting bike rack spaces toward this requirement, the number of parking spaces could be decreased by as much as 25 percent for commercial businesses.
and as written, the ordinance "...would have REQUIRED [emphasis is mine] business owners to install a new bicycle rack anytime their existing parking lot is developed or resurfaced."  But Councilman Dan Benton does not feel that businesses should be required to install bike racks if they don't want to.  He is quoted as saying, "We should not be making businesses put in more bike racks if they don't want to." and then claimed that bike racks are too expensive (the article quotes a cost of $100-$450 each).

I admit, I don't know how much resurfacing a parking lot costs, but I'll bet that $100 (or even $450 more) is pretty damn nominal if you get to reduce the number of parking spaces provided.  Plus the city already requires that businesses provide a certain number of parking spaces. So, how is requiring bicycle parking any different? A point made by Eric Auensen, chair of the Berkley Environmental Committee.  (oh yeah, I know how... its cheaper!)


Ok, ok, I likely won't win many friends in the business community with this opinion, so since we've already tossed out the ordinance, and we're starting over, then let's make it a requirement for the DDA area.  Hey, if you're a lawyers office or insurance agency locating in a "high traffic" area, then you should have to provide bike parking.  Plus, 12 to 14 bikes fit in each singular parking place, so you lose one space and gain 14 "spaces" - seems like a pretty good trade off to me.  All for 100 bucks.

As long as I'm complaining about this, might as well complain about the lack of bike lanes to safely get to businesses on Coolidge and 12 Mile Road too....    And HEY, how come our existing bike routes END at the city's edge?!?  Why doesn't Berkley, Southfield, Royal Oak, and Oak Park play nice together on bike routes?!?

Battles for other days, methinks.
Photo Credit: Cyclelicio.us

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