Students at Temple University’s Department of City and Regional Planning put together a study for the Bicycle Coalition this spring looking at bicycle parking in the city, examining bicycle parking through an assessment of best practices with respect to policy, design, and supportive programming.
“Existing bicycle parking infrastructure within Center City is examined based upon an inventory of both formal and informal bicycle parking infrastructure along with their utilization,” the authors note. “The parking inventory captures all varieties of bicycle parking racks, their location, and design. Additionally, all instances of bicycles secured to objects not specifically designed for this purpose, including landscaping, fences and street signs were noted. In all, the inventory revealed a total of 2,007 bicycle racks, representing 4,535 bicycle parking spaces.”
The authors made specific recommendations for the areas of Market East and the Avenue of the Arts. Among Market East, they recommended:
- Ensuring that at least 200 spaces are integrated into the planned “Fashion District Philadelphia” development;
- 2 Retrofitting the PPA “Parkade on 8th Street” lot to include a minimum of 50 bicycle parking spaces;
- Retrofitting the PPA “Autopark at Gallery Mall” lot to include a minimum of 50 bicycle parking spaces; and
- Installing a series of ten, covered, U rack clusters or on-street corrals at capacities of a minimum 12 spaces per cluster/corral (120 spaces).
Additionally, they noted a city agency needs to be tasked with enforcing existing bike parking requirements (which are currently not being met), implement a bicycle parking program, require long-term bike parking, and mandate parking in the public realm.
“Philadelphia’s ordinance fails to distinguish between parking that is publicly available and parking that is not; by not specifying that a percentage of required bicycle parking is met with publicly available parking, developers can provide it for the exclusive use of their building tenants,” the authors note, adding:
“By mandating that a portion of required bicycle parking is installed for public use, Philadelphia’s policy will accommodate more demand and more equitably distribute bicycle parking.”
Read the whole thing below: