Portland Bike Parking: Corral vs Oasis
Greg Raisman of the Portland Office of Transportation takes Streetfilms on a tour of bicycle parking facilities in Portland, Oregon. Watch the video and learn the pros and cons of on street bicycle parking (a bicycle corral) vs a sheltered bicycle parking oasis. And check out this article to read about the next bicycle parking amenities in Portland. Streetfilms has documented a variety of bike parking options. At many BART stations in the Bay Area you can park in outdoor lockers or inside Bike stations. New York City has also started to explore granting more on-street space for cyclists to park like here on Bedford Avenue.
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Greg Raisman: [00:05] This is one of the locations in our city where we’ve converted a little bit of on-street car parking to use it for a lot of on-street bicycle parking. Before this bike parking went in, on both sides of the street for this one block there was enough space for 25 vehicles. Now with the conversion, there’s enough space for 65 vehicles.
Caroline Samponaro: [00:26] There are a lot of really great benefits about these parking swaps, like we call them in New York City. They really enhance business. In front of the restaurant there can be 22 bikes parked, whereas before there were probably about two cars.
Richard Satnick: [00:38] We’ve always been a very bicycling oriented company, but when they came to me with the idea of doing these corrals, it was instantaneous, oh yeah, let’s do it. It’s been obviously very successful. They’re very heavily used all the time, and the usual business argument that you’ve taken away parking just doesn’t work here.
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Caroline Samponaro: [01:00] They really stopped hitting pedestrians and cyclists. The bike parking is on the street in a better space than on the sidewalk, so pedestrians don’t feel like their space has to be taken away.
Speaker: [01:09] Every time I’ve seen those on-street bike parking they’re completely full, like the one at Stumptown or Porcanow [sp?? 01:17] or Run Mississippi.
Speaker: [01:18] If it were up to me this would stretch from one bike corral to the other and there would be nothing but bikes on this side of the street.
Greg Raisman: [01:25] These bike corrals or on-street bike parking are great because they’re very low cost and easy to install. There’s no impact on any other utilities. We don’t have to worry about pipes under the ground or where the water’s going or anything, cos they don’t affect any of that. They just let the water run its course down the gutter.
Bill Stites: [01:43] The city does require that the businesses that have frontage to the bike corrals are responsible for maintenance, and that’s simply because the city equipment can’t get into this area anymore. Came over to this corral here at 34, found it clean. So headed down to the one that we have down at the other corner at 33rd, that wasn’t too bad, it’s mostly just organic debris from the trees in the area.
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Greg Raisman: [02:13] A bike oasis is where we have actually built a kerb extension and then we’ve put a cover on it to protect it from the rain. One of the big things it does is that with a kerb extension or street sweepers do their normal job and it stays part of our municipal streets cleaning program. And so by having it on a kerb extension, it’s just a lot more natural and easier, it provides a much cleaner urban design, we don’t have any bollards around it and that sort of thing. And then the last thing that this does, it’s really nice is it provides bicycle and pedestrian maps for the neighbourhood.
Speaker: [02:44] It’s really inviting. There’s a roof here and it’s nice to actually have space to lock your bikes in a line instead of having to just cluster everybody’s in a big pile.
Greg Raisman: [02:53] So there’s something about the bike corrals in terms of function that I think so far they’ve been more successful in what some things we can learn from. There’s something that’s quite empowering about parking your bicycle on the asphalt. It’s a real equaliser. It feels like, you know, gosh… and when I’m riding my bicycle or I’m driving my car, my community and my city respects me equally.
Speaker: [03:13] Among friends of mine, more and more people are cycling and I think that, I mean, often you’ll see like, you know, three or four city blocks and they’ll just be one of those, you know, staple racks and everybody just goes on the street lamps and stop signs and everything. So, I mean, I think you could put the infrastructure and it starts to help people, you know, get around town more.
Greg Raisman: [03:35] It’s really important as we go forward to find that balance between how do we make it attractive, something we can really support on a programmatic basis, but also make it so that we’re able to take some risk in putting in in some of the highest demand places so that we’re able to make conversions like this one that really build community and business
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