NYC Bike Advocates Call for More Secure Bike Parking

After six months of a successful secure bike parking program in a partnership with Oonee at locations around New York City, bike advocates are wondering what the holdup is. 

According to a statement from the city’s Department of Transportation, “DOT stands by its commitment in the Streets Plan to continue exploring secure bike parking, and looks forward to reviewing the data from the Oonee demonstration.” Yet, according to an article by Gersh Kuntzman for Streetsblog NYC, “There’s already ample data on Oonee’s efficacy” in previous pilot programs. 

The recent program, Kuntzman argues, will likely not show similarly robust results simply because “By the time locals figured out what the device was and how to use it, it was gone.” Anecdotally, people who used the secure parking expressed enthusiastic support for the service. “The need, and the public demand, for secure bike parking has long been documented, most recently in a Transportation Alternatives report that documented that a lack of safe places for bike parking not only reduces cycling, but reduces safety, increases theft (particularly to working cyclists) and hurts local businesses.”

A network of secure bike parking could also encourage more people to replace car trips with bike trips and lower their carbon footprint. “Earlier this year, a study on climate change mitigation by Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations recommended the conversion of 5 percent of street parking spaces into 150,000 sheltered bike parking spaces by 2025.”