New York City has come up with an ingenious way to double its supply of biking parking. It’s turning 12,000 decommissioned single-space parking meters into 12,000 bike racks.
A few years back, the city moved towards a muni-meter parking-meter system for convenience and, according to the city, to be able to fit more parked cars in a single bit of street space. The city sold a lot of the meters, and now, all over, you can see beheaded parking meters, now just ugly poles sticking out the sidewalk.
According the New York Post, the city’s going to be paying Louis Barbato Landscaping $1.9 million to turn those ugly poles into less ugly bike parking.Because the parking meter poles are well rooted into the ground, they’ll help keep the new racks from being stolen. And there are a lot of them. Which means tons more bike parking. Which means biking is that much easier. Which means more bikers! As long as they don’t all get run over by confused out-of-towners circling the block looking for a meter.
