Updated, 5:20 p.m. | The city is doing an all-out bicycling push over the next few years, creating 200 miles of new bike lanes and paths and exploring the concept of bike sharing. But a city study found that one of the biggest obstacles to increased bicycle commuting is not safety, but rather the lack of secure bike parking at work — particularly in areas like Midtown Manhattan. Having a safe place to store a bike at work is an urban amenity that ranks somewhere with having unfettered roof access or a key to a community garden.
A possible solution? Bike valet parking.
Yes, that’s right, valet service for bicycles.
O.K., valet parking for cars has never caught on here the way it has in Los Angeles, where the service is provided at airports, supermarkets, gyms and even Starbucks. But bike valet service is perfect for New York. It fits in a dense urban environment. And it can be set up by single entrepreneurs akin to vendors.
Bike valet parking has been around in the city for at least a decade, but mostly as an occasional volunteer service provided at public events like film screenings, “Summers Streets” events and the recent Lower East Side pickle festival by Transportation Alternatives, the pro-bike lobby.
But it’s gone upscale. Even a recent Fashion Week event at Bergdorf Goodman offered bike valet parking. It’s something that is also offered across the country, in cities like San Francisco and Chicago.
“People worry about locking up the bike,” said Hillary Nanney, 24, who was one of dozens of bikers who used the free bike valet service at International Pickle Day. “This is a great service.”
Yes, the city is already making efforts to ease bike parking: increasing bike facilities for city employees, building bike shelters, encouraging buildings to incorporate indoor bike parking and installing nifty bike racks, some of which are spectacularly designed.
But it’s not going to be nearly enough. For one thing, the proposed Bicycle Parking Text Amendment would require buildings to offer bike parking — but only new ones.
What about all the towering buildings we’ve already built? Companies seem vaguely hostile to bicycles (despite the proposed bikes-in-buildings City Council bill [pdf], which was supported in a rally today).
And while the city has included provisions to install 1,200 new bike racks by 2009, a bike rack means that the parking is legal, but not secure. As the city’s own bicycle-maestro put it: “Use a good lock.”
A valet service would give people piece of mind. It could make economic sense too. Right now, most bike valet parking is free. But many people would be willing to pay at the least the equivalent of a roundtrip subway fare or thereabouts — $3-4 a day or $80 a month. So with just 25-30 bikes in a day, someone could earn around $100 to cover wages and overhead, which isn’t much (which would be minimal).
You can pack in bicycles a lot more densely when you valet park (it works that way for cars, too). A parking space for a car can fit 20 bikes.
It’s also quite labor efficient. Instead of one valet driver per car at any instance, a bike valet could ostensibly move two bikes at a time — one for each arm.
And what’s great about bike valet parking (as opposed to car valets) is that it’s friendly to our labor market. First, you deal with sticky issue of driver’s licenses. Second, you don’t need to speak great English to park and unpark bike. As with a coat check, you only have to match numbers. So this could help with the city’s unemployment rate, which seems to be inching upward.
There has already been evidence in this city for bike parking entrepreneurship. This year, business executives have already dreamed up the city’s first bikes-only parking lot.
But they were lucky to find an empty huge lot, which is a real estate rarity in New York City. What’s great about bicycle valet is that perhaps sole proprietors can set up their own shop with even just a single parking space or two.
The city (or perhaps a third party like Transportation Alternatives) should license the valets so people would be be confident that their valet isn’t a fly-by-night bike thief. The city has already used its licensing power to increase the availability of fruit and vegetable vendors in poorer neighborhoods, why not use it to increase parking valets?
