Some good news to start the year from Paul Pinsker, the City’s parking engineer:
I noticed the signed “Bicycle Station” in your piece on Chicago [here] …..
Just to let you know, we succeeded in having Cadillac Fairview required to do a feasibility study for a bikade in Pacific Centre as part of their recent rezoning. Bunt & Associates has gotten the contract, and a young engineer on Bunt’s staff has been assigned to do the feasibility study, and he’s very keen on the idea, which is good.
This will look at location/space requirements, features, fixed and variable costs, revenue projections, and management. We’re looking at about 250 to 300 bike capacity. Once the costs are known, we can then look to funding sources, such as Community Amenity Costs, grants from Translink or senior government, or others.
We’d like to achieve our first bikade, finally, by what do you know…..2010! Let’s hope we can pull this off.
One would think that the bikade is a no-brainer. Wouldn’t you need concentration camp levels of security in place (cameras, klieg lights) to prevent the bike theft-istas from making this a hangout? Imagine something like the photo above, but with a guard tower…
Correction to the above post…the building above is not a ‘guard tower’ but a solarium like entryway and overflow bike parking area. Much of the facility is below ‘ground’ — though actually it is well above ground as it is part of a park elevated above commuter rail yards. It is a very nice facility in Chicago IL USA, but not run by Bikestation.
Thanks,
Todd Boulanger
Chairman Bikestation