A growing population of bicycle riders in Forth Worth needs more racks than these. (Photo: Fort Worthology)A tip of the hat goes to our member blog Fort Worthology for being part of the bike parking solution in Fort Worth, Texas.
Just a few months ago, the city approved an ambitious "Bike Fort Worth" bicycle transportation plan, which aims to create nearly 1,000 miles of bike lanes -- up from 100 miles today. Of course, the growing number of people on bicycles in town means a growing need for places to park bikes. That's where yesterday's Fort Worthology post picks up. Kevin Buchanan writes:
It’s not every day that we get to report on something we actually had a hand in, but today is one of those days. Fort Worth South, Inc. wanted to improve the bike parking situation in the Near Southside as part of their larger goal of huge bike infrastructure improvements across the district, and they decided they wanted some outside help. So they called us and Trinity Bicycles up and asked if we’d collaborate on a new bike parking improvement plan. After a lot of discussion, many meetings and several in-the-field work sessions identifying parking locations, ideal setups and more, we put together a comprehensive bike parking plan. Now, we’re happy to report, Phase One of the plan has been approved by the city and funded by the Near Southside TIF (Tax Increment Finance district), so we can give some details.
While we’re still finalizing the number of racks and such, we can say that this will be a pretty dramatic increase in bike parking, even in Phase One. At the moment, there are approximately 12 of the city-installed Texas star “lollipop” racks across the entire district.… Even in the best of cases, the Texas star racks are less than ideal -- they look more like street art than bike racks, making them not obvious to riders, and there are simply too few of them and in too few locations. With the large increases in bike traffic in the Near Southside in the last year or so, thanks to the Magnolia Avenue bike lanes, groups like the Night Riders and a continued increase in new urban residents, the existing bike parking infrastructure was becoming very inadequate to meet resident and visitor needs.
As mentioned above, we’re still finalizing all the numbers, so we can’t give a specific number yet, but we’re fairly confident that you can look forward to dozens of new [simple 'staple'] racks in Phase One.
Nice work. The bicycle transportation scene in that part of Texas has a lot of potential.
More from around the network: The Dead Horse Times analyzes plans for a Columbia River crossing between Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington. Walkable Dallas-Forth Worth asks, What is livability? And The City Fix kicks off a great new series on "Access for All" with a post about Rio street dwellers and how their lives are affected by the lack of good public transit.
