The new Chicago Department of Transportation bike parking program manager, Kathleen Murphy, described the upcoming summer and fall installation season during the Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Council meeting two weeks ago. She outlined three initiatives that will get over a thousand new bicycle parking spaces installed on sidewalks and roadways.
Murphy is continuing the city's long-standing program of siting and arranging installation of hundreds of regular Chicago U-racks. This year, she said, the city aims to install 400 new racks, a slight decrease from the 500-600 new racks that were installed in recent years but still a net gain of 800 bike parking spaces.
In-street bike parking corrals, with room for 12 bicycles apiece, will greatly expand across Chicago this year. Murphy pointed to a new bike parking corral that was installed just after the MBAC meeting, outside the Harding Tavern at 2732 N. Milwaukee Avenue in Logan Square. CDOT spokesperson Pete Scales said that it replaced one metered car parking space, which was swapped with a reserve space. Scales also said that the bike parking corral outside Intuit Art Center, on Milwaukee just south of Ogden and Chicago, will return next month after being removed for repaving.
Murphy sais she's working on getting 15-20 more corrals installed this year. Scales said the corrals near the following sites are in different stages of the application process.
- On The Route Bicycles in Lakeview, at 3144 N. Lincoln
- Second City in Old Town, at 1616 N. Wells
- Fat Cat in Uptown, 4840 N. Broadway
- Three locations near Six Corners, at 4820 W. Irving Park, 4015 N. Milwaukee, and 4018 N. Cicero
- Outside several of FLATS Chicago's residential buildings, mostly in Uptown and Edgewater
Murphy also said she is continuing CDOT's program of relocating under-used racks. About 200 existing bike racks will be removed, refurbished, and reinstalled in new locations where they'll see more use.
This summer, Murphy said that CDOT will launch a new website to collect suggestions for new bike rack locations. It will be similar to the Divvy station suggestion map, which was developed by Streetsblog's parent organization, OpenPlans. Scales said the new website "will be available for public use in a couple of weeks."
Finally, CDOT is looking for different types and designs of bike parking to be included in the next contract, and Murphy said you can email her with your suggestions.
