AAPD: Please Move Your Bicycle
Bikes at the 4th & Washington parking garage sport fuchsia notices warning of possible impoundment on Feb. 5, 2009.
Bright fuchsia cards printed with the Ann Arbor Police Department seal have been threaded through the spokes of the wheels on nine bicycles locked to the hoops at the 4th & Washington parking structure. The cards weren’t placed there as decoration, but as a warning: these bicycles face possible impoundment starting Feb. 5.
What’s the problem with people locking their bikes to the hoops provided for exactly that purpose? As the notices say, “Your bicycle may be impounded as provided by city ordinance when it has remained unattended on public property for a period of more than 48 hours after a written notice has been affixed to the bicycle.” The notices reflected that they were written on Feb. 3 and indicated a possible impoundment date of Feb. 5.
The Chronicle has noticed the same collection of bicycles locked at these hoops since visiting the location to report on innovation in parking information data. The city’s applicable code reads:
10:174. Impounding of vehicles.
Members of the Police Department are hereby authorized to remove bicycles from a public place to the City bicycle pound or other place of safety, under the circumstances hereinafter enumerated.
(1) When any bicycle is reasonably believed to be stolen.
(2) When any bicycle has been left unattended upon any public street, alley, or sidewalk continuously for a period of 48 hours, or when any bicycle is left in such a manner as to obstruct unreasonably the flow of vehicular or pedestrian traffic on any public street, alley, or sidewalk.
(3) When the operator of a bicycle is detained because of a traffic violation and refuses to give his or her name and address.
(Ord. No. 46-61, 8-14-61; Ord. No. 26-74, 8-19-74)10:175. Notice.
When a bicycle is impounded under the provisions of this section and the Police Department knows or is able to ascertain the owner thereof the Police Department shall, within a reasonable period of time, give and cause to be given a notice in writing to such owner of the fact of impoundment and reasons therefor.
The notices also indicate that the bicycles are unregistered. While the city has an ordinance requiring registration of bicycles, writing on the WBWC GoogleGroup last summer (2008), Kris Talley, president of the Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition, reported that the consensus at the city’s alternative transportation meetings was that ”the current system is not very functional, and at one point there seemed to be some movement towards getting rid of it altogether. But as that would require some level of ordinance changing that no one was willing to tackle (as I recall), I believe the thought is now to at least make the transaction more meaningful by giving cyclists useful information (like about safety and rules of the road) when they register.”
The bicycles to which the bright fuchsia notices have been attached are locked at the hoop directly adjacent to bike lockers administered through getDowndown, which can be used for long-term storage. However, except for one location (at Maynard Street across from the parking structure), the getDowntown website currently indicates that all of its bike lockers are full.
I have never figured out why there are so many expensive-looking bikes secured with expensive-looking locks which have been clearly abandoned all around town.
They should be donated to the East Quad Bike Co-op, http://eqbc.org/. They have an annual spring event where you can come in, help repair a bike (learning how along the way), and ride it out for free.
I can understand bicycles being stored in the public right-of-way for an extended period of time, if the owner lives somewhere that doesn’t have private storage for the bike, and if the owner doesn’t ride the bike in the winter.
If you wanted to improve downtown property values by making it attractive and desirable for people to live near downtown, walk in one of the most walkable cities in the country, and ride their bicycle instead of driving, then you’d want to be sure that there was some place obvious for winter bicycle storage or self-storage. Instead, you get bicycle graveyards like this which Spencer Thomas photographed last year:
Flickr Link
The city’s guide to bicycle storage for businesses says:
“Class A
Medium to Long-term Parking
Enclosed storage lockers.
Enclosed bicycle parking shed.
A room within a building, which
contains individual storage lockers or
rack spaces
Individual private garages.
Approximate cost for one bike locker =
$2,100 without installation. ”
Now, there’s lots of free parking spaces in some of the DDA garages; not 4th and Washington, which fills up at peak times with beer drinkers, but places like 4th and William which often has 100s of spaces free day and night. If you build something that did long term storage for 20 bikes and housed it securely on some upper level of some garage, it shouldn’t cost more than $40,000 (and probably a lot less; you can rent portable self-storage easily). Rather than valet parking your car, the existing valet attendant would valet park your bike, and you’d get a ticket that you could redeem when the ice melts for the right fee.
Seems straightforward enough to me, and the DDA already employs all of the contractors necessary to start this up today; all you need to do is tow in one lockable storage unit and occupy one parking space and you can do the rest with staff you already have.
@Ed: Is that near one of the U of M libraries? My guess is that those are student bikes bought at a cut-throat^W^W^W^W^W^Wrate bike shop and abandoned after Fall term, rather than permanent resident’s bikes “stored” for the winter.
The *last* thing I want is some parking-lot attendant ferrying my bike around. What if they knock it over and damage a derailleur? What if it gets stolen while in their custody (or by them)? Are they walking them up the ramp, or riding them? If they’re riding, how will they be equipped to handle various brands of clipless pedals?
“Permanent” covered bike parking = A Good Thing™, Valet bike parking = Not worth the hassle/risks.
Ed, I think it’s much more important to have adequate hoops for bicycle commuters than to have city-owned storage for bikes. The ridiculous bike pile-up at 4th & Washington has meant that cyclists who brave the ice and frigid weather to bike downtown have almost nowhere to safely secure a bike. Most of the outside hoops are in snow mounds. The 48-hour policy has been enforced continuously at the Maynard structure because the Republic Parking employees have been vigilant and now they are going to pay more attention to 4th & Washington, too.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why people have bikes left unattended for months on end. In some cases, I have seen some classy-looking bikes turn to piles of rust because the owners have left them behind, locked to a bike hoop (usually on campus). It’s like any other property — if you store your belongings where they belong, you shouldn’t be left for someone else to deal with. I am all for the ordinance. I bike when it’s not winter, and when not being used, the bike is in my garage.
The hoops at the 4th & Washington structure are now bike-free.
Amsterdam has great solutions for bike parking in general. They have large separate bicycle corrals at various point in the city. At coliseums they have parking available for 100s of bikes and closer than car parking. Ann Arbor could easily provide better solutions for biking commuters. My solution was to get one of the lockers, but they are limited. Before I got that it was problematic to find a good spot. Now I typically see available spots inside the garage at 4th & Williams (on the 4th st entrance)