Today's Picture: Richard and Mary May Nash took a Sunday afternoon bicycle trip to Walgreen's on Frankfort Ave. They use the bike fairly often since Richard bought a "kangaroo carrier" kid's seat for his bike back in the summer.
Richard locked the bike to a sign post in front of the store because there are no bike racks. For more on the kid's seat go to www.weeride.com. But let's explore this parking subject for a minute.
Why don't we have even the bare minimum bicycle parking spaces for a city our size? There's plenty of research that demonstrates that a lot more people would use their bicycles for short trips if parking were available at their destinations.
Other cities in the U.S. have built "bicycle corrals" and covered "bike Oasis" parking that improved store traffic for neighborhood businesses. Why don't we do it, too?
The Environmentalist's Dream
In Japan, an automated system carefully stores bicycles underground until their owners return to claim them with the swipe of a card. And a very compact system keeps Swiss bikes dry under mushroom-shaped parking pods.
Meanwhile, Richard and Mary May Nash will just have to keep finding sign posts at Handicap Parking spots and places like that.
Here's an idea for Louisville to encourage less car use and more bicycle transportation: Scrap the much-debated plans for new bridges over the Ohio. Finish the much-needed bike and pedestrian bridge and build some creative bike parking facilities at each end. We'd save scarce resources. It would be entertaining. Let's build world-class parking facilities for bikes downtown and watch them fill up as people learn to cut down on carbon emissions.
By the way, thanks to the staff and management of Z Fusion at Fourth and Market, and Tumbleweed on River Road, for recently letting me use out-of-the-way indoor spaces to park my bike.
PS: Remember, every lane is a bike lane. Share the road.
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bikecommuter