Organizations support update to Seattle’s Bicycle Parking Code, Recommend Additional Changes
This afternoon, Bicycle Security Advisors, Cascade Bicycle Club, and Seattle Neighborhood Greenways sent a letters to the City of Seattle in support of an update to the city’s parking code and recommending additional changes.
The Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) has proposed an update to the Seattle Municipal Code that sets forth requirements for parking in buildings, including bicycle parking. The comment period for public review of the proposed update closed today (October 5).
The overriding principle to our letter was to provide sufficient bicycle parking for Seattle to be able to reach its goal of quadrupling bike ridership by 2030, the equivalent of 12.5 percent of commuters biking to work.
SDCI’s proposed update includes several improvements, including:
- Streamlining the required bike parking requirements to be the same citywide instead of three separate standards for different areas of the city.
- Improving the required amount of bicycle parking for many land uses
- Removing a provision that halves bike parking requirements after the first 50 bike spaces.
- Establishing a minimum bike parking requirement for all land uses, even if not specifically mentioned in the code.
- Requiring large office buildings to provide showers for bike commuters.
BSA, Cascade, and SNG also recommended several improvements to draft update. Here are a few highlights:
- Further improving the required amount of bicycle parking for specific land uses.
- Encouraging bike parking to be located at ground level rather than in vehicle parking garages.
- Requiring bike valet parking at major events.
- Planning for free-floating bike share.
- Preventing property managers for excessively charging tenants and commuters for use of bike rooms and bike lockers.
- Delegating more authority to the Seattle Department of Transportation to set and adapt bicycle parking guidelines.
- Improving mechanisms for enforcement.
You can read our entire letter and recommendations here (PDF).
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This is quite thoughtful. Thank you! Some other considerations for the future:
1. At schools and daycares, some space that accommodate longer or wider cargo bikes, trail-a-bikes, xtracycles, trailers, and tandems would help the non-typical setups used by family cyclists.
2. Electrical outlets in secured office bike rooms for charging e-assist bikes.
3. Video monitoring of bike rooms.
4. Accessibility to, and in, bike rooms for some cargo bikes.
5. Headroom in bike rooms so we aren’t crawling under beams to lock bikes to the rack.
6. Ventilation in bike rooms. Where do long distance commuters store stinky sweaty clothes and/or dry wet rain gear?