- Houston’s Flurry of New Construction Paves Way for Booming Demolition Business [Houston Business Journal ($)]
- Novel City Proposal Would Give Incentives, Possibly Require Businesses To Provide Bike Parking [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- TxDOT To Widen FM 1097 through Willis from Texas 75 West to I-45 [Courier of Montgomery County]
- Clean Bathrooms One Reason for Buc-ee’s Becoming Texas Phenomenon [Click2Houston]
Photo: Candace Garcia via Swamplot Flickr Pool
“Novel City Proposal Would Give Incentives, Possibly Require Businesses To Provide Bike Parking”
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I’m fine with incentives, but there should be no requirement. So we need yet ANOTHER law telling everyone what they can and can’t do?
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How about this: If you want to encourage people to put in bike parking, then let people REPLACE some of the CAR parking they’re required to have with bike parking.
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Or, if people want bike parking, they will eat/shop at places that have it. So people will put them in to help fill the demand or to attract this “evolving” swell of biking clients. Whoa, amazing how a free market works.
“The ordinance also would allow any property, other than single-family homes, to reduce required car parking by up to 10 percent by trading one car space for four bike spaces. A 10,000-square-foot retail business, for instance, could drop its required 40 car spaces to 36 by increasing its bike parking from the required one space to 17”
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egg on face.
@cody, good catch, I was going to say, offering the ability to include ‘bike parking’ would probably reduce the requirement to include car parking. unfortunately, I don’t pay for chron, so I have no idea what they’re talking about :)
You can fit way more than 4 bikes in a normal sized parking space, two racks that can accommodate 8 each could work easily.
Does this mean a business can cut their car parking requirement in half if they offer enough bike parking? Or is ten percent the max?
I think to make it mandatory is not feasible, most areas of Houston are not accessible by a bicylce (without a deathwish). The businesses should decide what type of customers they want to serve.
My building (Ent. Plaza) had a survery last year – “should we install bike rack for y’all”.
The answer: NO
Let private enterprise continue to do it’s thing and keep Govt. out of it.
I use my bike as a primary mode of transportation and any kind of rack of any size would be nice. Most of the time finding a pole off of the street is the only option anywhere near most businesses. And that’s not where I like to leave a good bike plus it screws up pedestrian traffic.
There is a chicken and the egg problem with bike transit in Houston. People do not think that it is worth it to support anything to make the city more bike friendly because it seems like there is too much traffic in the city for any sane person to try to ride their bike inside the loop. Yet, the best way to make riding inside the loop safer is to get more bike traffic out there. More bike traffic contributes to greater driver awareness and pushes the municipality to make big changes to improve bike mobility like providing real bike lanes, adding bike racks, etc.
@Old school
Nice thoughts, I like it when people offer just their own rationalized thoughts and opinions without some vitriolic rant against anything that is a change to society or governmental consideration. Agree with you or not (I do) nice approach. I wish the internet were more civil, but I also wish I had a money tree to. At least one is more possible than the other.
I would love to ride my bike to work in Midtown if I had someplace to store it securely while I’m here. The management of the building in which we are tenants forbids us to bring our bikes inside, and at least one of our employees has had a bike stolen while it was locked on a standard bike rack on the sidewalk. My dream is to have the enclosed racks like they have at the library.
Grandfather existing business from compliance and I’m in.
And sell Ad Space on the racks to Bike Barn or Lance Armstrong (jk).
But better bike lanes and roads should come before. That is the business of govt.
@Craig the free market apparently needs the city to set parking guidelines anyway, so I see no reason not to include bicycles. If they could just create safe pathways across the interstates and the other major thoroughfares it would be so much better.
@everyone but cody.
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this is what Cody added..
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“The ordinance also would allow any property, other than single-family homes, to reduce required car parking by up to 10 percent by trading one car space for four bike spaces. A 10,000-square-foot retail business, for instance, could drop its required 40 car spaces to 36 by increasing its bike parking from the required one space to 17″
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emphasis on ALLOW, so not mandatory, but if a business is so inclined to put in a bike rack that accommodates 4 bicycles, then they can remove 1 regular car parking space, but if what Cody wrote is accurate, it would not REQUIRE anyone to have bike parking….
Just fix the dang potholes! Start with Westheimer from Kirby to Westlayan please.
The mayor champions hike and bike trails and farmers markets at city hall and all sorts of non-essential things but the minute there is a discussion about tax rates it’s “Oh no, we wont be able to afford police, fire fighters, and road repairs.”
Take care of basic needs before even thinking about wants.
And start with the dang potholes!
Anse,
The only reasonable justification for parking minimums is actually govt. failure. The city produces a valuable good, in excess paved area that can be used as on-street parking, and refuses to charge for its use. Unfortunately the exactly wrong response to that is to require even more area to be paved over, i.e. parking minimums.
City owns the ROW. City can fund in Pedal-Zones.
Bike haiku: Ride to work / eighty degrees in May / Shower anyone?
My company has showers already. What we don’t have is secure bike parking.
Start small and basic. Coordinate a program for commuters using existing infrastructure.
Rather than mandate, why not encourage businesses with bike racks with ads. Heineken and Amstel both have many bike racks that they sponsor with a sign at the top outside clubs and bars.
Better yet.. make it fun. Have a contest.. school art meets shop and make the most creative racks! Go a step farther and host a campaign akin to the art cows/boot decoration.
Safety first means navigable, direct bike paths or routes. Does anyone else question the high cost of path construction? Perhaps a system of building new paths on ROWs using cheaper select fill gravel paths, which when a user threshold is met then are hardtopped.. think rural roads that later morphed into interstates…
Finally, in the same vein.. there is enough infrastructure to begin a network, it just needs to be organized. Gyms with showers might have a shower only membership? Bike parking downtown where secure parking and maintenance could be handled cheaper than parking a car downtown.
The list goes on and on.. takes a great deal of time and ORGANIZATION.