Long-term residential bicycle parking is scarce in Portland. Residents of condo, apartment and dormitory buildings have to squeeze their bikes in through back doors, lock them to utility pipes, hang them on fences, dirty up carpets, scratch elevator walls, or just leave them outside to (eventually) get stolen.
With no secure bike parking, and banned from bringing them into their units, building residents get creative.
Why? Because the City’s code requires little long-term bike parking in Portland buildings – just one spot per four residential units.
In a City where 70% of residents own at least one bike, 18% get to work primarily or secondarily by bike, and bike ridership is growing exponentially, this requirement is almost comically low.
Yet there is good news: Bureau of Planning and Sustainability staff have conducted an analysis of bike parking demands in the City and have proposed that the Planning Commission raise the minimum amounts of long-term bike parking required from one space per four units to 1.5 spaces per unit.
There is a cost to the current woefully inadequate requirements. These costs are, today, borne by the residents of these buildings. The only thing that would change with an increased requirement would be how they pay that cost.
Should residents pay up front, when they buy or rent their unit, and get quality, secure bike parking for it?
Or should they pay later, and likely more, for the high cost of retrofitting buildings to add parking; for stolen bikes and bike parts; for ruined carpets, dirtied walls and scratched elevator doors; with the hassle and frustration of dragging a bike up stairs and through apartments; and of course with the pollution, congestion and health costs that result from discouraging people from using a cheap form of transportation for short trips?
This proposal would not be retroactive. Current buildings would not have to go back and install bike parking. (So if you manage a residential building, don’t freak out.)
Future changes to the code could also introduce a “district” approach, in which areas of town with very high rates of bike ridership have higher residential long-term bike parking requirements than those parts of town with lower rates of bike ridership.
If you are frustrated by the costs you experience due to inadequate long-term residential bike parking, please support this proposal. Without your support, it may not happen.
Send an email to the Commission:
planningcommission@ci.portland.or.us
Send a letter to the Commission:
Portland Planning Commission
c/o Bureau of Planning
1900 SW 4th Ave., Suite 7100
Portland, OR 97201-5380
Testify at the hearing:
Tuesday, October 13th, 1:00 pm
1900 SW 4th Ave, Room 2500A, Portland
Call (503) 823-7700 Tuesday morning to confirm agenda
Want to discuss this with the BTA? Call Michelle Poyourow at (503) 226-0676 x13.
I would bet that a lot of people would be willing to pay a little bit extra to have residential buildings provide good bike parking. Right now, we’re parking 4 bikes in our living room, so I directly feel the benefit of having a separate bike parking area. Plus, if it was simply folded into the cost of purchasing or renting a place, most people probably wouldn’t notice. This would also, I imagine, be a huge deal to people who live on the 2nd or 3rd stories of apartment buildings, as then they would have a good place to park a bike that didn’t require them to haul it up and down 2 flights of stairs.
If your bike is not good enough for the bedroom or living room, well… what difference does it make where you put it?