(Photo: J. Maus/BikePortland)
Our bike parking coverage is sponsored by Huntco.
Downtown Portland’s most interesting new meal spot could be described as an indoor food cart pod, or maybe a slightly upmarket food court.
But whatever you want to call Pine Street Market, one thing it’s clearly short of is bike parking.
A few weeks ago, when I met a friend there, I resorted to something I’ve never had to do since moving to Portland: locking my bike to the plumbing outside a nearby building.
This is such an odd situation in Portland, which usually excels at commercial bike parking above all else, that it’s been drawing attention:
Is there any plan to install bike parking at Pine St Market? These poor parking signs! @pinestreetpdx @PBOTinfo pic.twitter.com/V4JXhdbuFT
— Andrew Plambeck (@aplambeck) May 12, 2016
@BikePortland thanks for the update. When I took that photo there were bikes locked to saplings, and even to the saplings support stakes!
— Andrew Plambeck (@aplambeck) May 20, 2016
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So we asked the city’s bike parking team what was up. City spokesman John Brady replied on Thursday, saying that instead of adding their own on-site bike parking, Pine Street Market opted for the alternative in city code: paying into the city bike parking fund.
“Usually this would mean the installation of racks on the sidewalk,” Brady wrote in an email. “That didn’t happen in this case because we knew there would be a number of restaurants with café seating. So we are currently working with the building management to install a bike corral. There is also a BIKETOWN station slated for the area. Planning and phasing that mix of on-street bike storage is taking some time.”
So if you’ve got a yen for Israeli street food, bahn mi, fancy soft-serve ice cream, Mexican tapas, or Chicago-style hot dogs, grin and bear with the temporary parking problems. After all, this is what car drivers are choosing to deal with most of the time.
— Michael Andersen, (503) 333-7824 – michael@bikeportland.org
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“I resorted to something I’ve never had to do since moving to Portland: locking my bike to the plumbing outside a nearby building.”
why is that? do you just usually avoid places without real bike parking? or full bike parking? not getting out enough to those hole-in-the-wall places?
I still frequent places with no bike parking and gas meters are often used…
I use street signs a lot. Probably shouldn’t.
“After all, this is what car drivers are choosing to deal with most of the time.”
sort of… drivers are trying to park something 15x larger than themselves… cyclists are trying to park something 2x larger than themselves…
by it’s very nature it’s always easier/cheaper to park a bike…
drivers still have to find an open street spot or parking garage…
Abus Bordo “link” locks are very good for locking to oddly shaped structures.
Benefit of cable or chain locks over U, weird shaped objects.
Bike corral a block away in front of Stumptown, FYI. Great to hear that there will be one here as well, and a bikeytown station!
WALK A BLOCK FOR PARKING WHAT IS THIS CITY COMING TO
🙂
But seriously, people are already attaching bikes to every available appliance during lunchtime rather than walk that block. The issue is more pedestrian clutter than biking experience.
Seems more like a “desire line” or “sneckdown” type issue: support what people are actually doing.
The fact that the city expects cyclists to park a block away and walk tells you everything you need to know about how much the city “supports” cycling. It’s really outrageous that they don’t have decent bike parking with a reasonable distance.
Are you serious?!? Gasp, walk a block from parking? in Downtown?Sometimes some cyclists have the exact mentality of a suburban motorist, its just a bicycle instead of an SUV. Speed over everything else! Nowhere to park!!!
Isn’t Stumptown paying for that corral, though? It really isn’t fair to them if people park there then go somewhere else.
Businesses pay up to $2600 for a corral. It appears to be entirely negotiable. You can submit the application and just check “no”.
I seriously hope the City will consider placing the Bkeytown stations in the street and not on the sidewalk. Sidewalks are way, way too valuable to be cluttered up with big bike corrals.
If one of the parking lanes were converted to a big bike corral, that would make enough room for 100 bikes. Is that enough?
I don’t think a small 10 bike corral would be nearly enough for this place, but I doubt the city would want to re-purpose the full lane, even though there are multiple parking lots around.
Thanks for covering this issue. Last week I walked by at lunch time and couldn’t believe the bikes I saw locked to everything within sight. A rather huge oversight not having parking ready for the building opening.
Bikes are easier to steal and more likely to be stolen than cars: hence it’s more practical to park one’s bicycle nearby. I always opt to lock up as close as possible. Not to saplings though. Bad for the tree.
Great point about Stumptown’s bike corral; it really doesn’t seem fair to them for folks to use their bike corral and then not support the businesses on that block: Stumptown, Bijou Cafe, etc. But an *additional* bike corral directly in front of Pine St Market would be wonderful!
So, to that end, I wrote a really nice letter to John Brady (john.brady@portlandoregon.gov), offering my enthusiastic support of a bike corral there. This really needs to be installed, regardless of how close to Pine St Market a Biketown station may end up being located. And I pointed out to him that bikes are being locked to everything possible, so a rather large bike corral would definitely be well used–and it would be yet another beautiful people-friendly piece of urban infrastructure! 🙂
It’s free public parking. Stumptown doesn’t own the bike parking in front of their business any more than homeowners own the car parking space in front of their house. That being said, we need more bike corrals everywhere downtown. 🙂