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City officials gathered this morning to open the new Union Station Bike Transit Center, the first secure bicycle parking facility of its kind on the East Coast.
The mood at the ribbon cutting ceremony could accurately be described as giddy, as local cycling enthusiasts joined DDOT Director Gabe Klein, already-a-card-carrying-member-of-the-Bikestation and known cyclist Ward 6 D.C. Council member Tommy Wells, and D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, who repeatedly referred to the Bikestation as "the coolest." Klein noted that 60 people had already signed up for memberships to the facility before it even opened today, as evidence of the potential demand for this kind of service in Washington.
The inside of the helmet-shaped facility includes secure parking for over 100 bikes, about 50 rentable lockers, a relatively spacious changing room, and a bike repair shop that is available to the general public, as well as members.
Get all the details on how memberships to the Bikestation work here.
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This is great! Now if only they could secure the parking deck on the back of Union Station, I'd be happy!
There must a rash of woodies at Greater Greater Washington.
Well, they *would* have, were it not for the saddle seat aggrivated erectile dysfunction they're all suffering from.
newhce: i think you meant washcycle. get your urban niche sites right before you make rash comments... :)
Ohhh..I think there are plenty of the them at GGW. Along with others who salivate whenever parking meter rates go up.
In all seriousness, I really hope people use this thing. It is a great idea.
agreed. the more it becomes clear that the city is serious about providing the proper infrastructure for cycling, the more people i think you'll see decide to get off the fence and give it a go.
What good is a locker room w/o showers? I like to bike, but this doesn't quite make sense to me.
A lot of people will ride the train and then get on their bike. So a shower at the bike station does them little good. The shower would have added a lot to the maintenance cost (they have to be cleaned frequently) and insurance. And because it's above a parking garage, getting that much water out there was a problem.
The location was not only chosen for the train commuters. It was also chosen as a central hub at the base of a bicycle trail for the bicycle commuters that ride in from the suburbs. Those riders would have needed a shower, as well as some of the potential riders that rode a bicycle from their homes to a train station at the beginning of their journey. The costs of adding a shower could have been augmented by placing this a block or two away, thus shaving about 3 million from the 4 million construction costs.
Face it, they traded practicality and functionality for a cool looking building. A bike station needs a shower, period.
Showers? You could not pay me enough to shower at a train station, and I imagine I am not alone.
They got the land for free, so they would need to find a piece of land a few blocks away that they could buy for what they saved in building the nicer structure (it only cost $4M so they couldn't have saved that much in construction and Chicago's cost $3.1 to build. Maybe they could have built one for $2M but then find me an available piece of land near Union Station for less than $2M). Showers would have been nice, but for those who need one, there is always the wet washcloth.
Eww, having showers available will only lead to gross missed-connections from locker-room dwellers. No thank you.
The only problem I see with this is that it doesn't look like like they have a "walk in" system. You have to sign up for a membership in advance.
Actually part of the point of this place being staffed is that the retail person can help people sign up on the spot. You still have to pay the $20 membership fee, but they can walk you through the process on their computer and take your payment there.