Editor’s note: This post was written by Colby Henley one of Tucson Velo’s newest contributors. Henley is a daily bicycle commuter and advocate.
The City of Tucson installed its first bike corral in front of the Rialto Theater in August 2009, the second at Time Market in October 2009, and the third at Epic Cafe in April 2010. Since then, no new corrals have been installed, but Tucson’s bicycle and pedestrian program manager Tom Thivener maintains a list of potential future locations, including some along the Modern Streetcar route that would need to be temporary installations or delayed altogether due to streetcar construction.
Thivener said that businesses that would like to have the city install a bike corral on the street near their location can submit a written request to the city. The requesting business would need to be okay with losing an on-street car parking space and need to get approval from any other businesses within 50 feet of the lost space. Additionally, if the space has a parking meter, approval from Parkwise would also be needed.
Here’s the list of potential future bike corral locations:
- 7th Street at 4th Ave
- 48 W. Pennington – City High
- 135 S. 6th Ave – Downtown Kitchen north of new sidewalk extension
- Treat north of Speedway – Xoom Juice
- Copper east of Campbell – Blue Willow
- 123 S. Stone – Cope Behavioral Health
- Pennington near Stone – University of Arizona
- Congress Street west of Stone – Fox Theater (streetcar)
- Congress Street – Yoga/Sparkroot (streetcar)
- Food Conspiracy Coop/Cafe Passe/Antigone Books (streetcar)
Where else do you think would be a good location for a bike corral?
Q: “Where else do you think would be a good location for a bike corral?”
A: Most any place outside the tiresome UA-Mountain-Downtown-4th Ave center of the universe as endlessly presented in these pages, but that also integrates with Suntran.
Parking perspective needs up-dating. Although seemingly adequate provision was made in the West Entrance area to the U of A, it is over-run. Even at the new dorms on Tyndall and 6th St., the inside secure storage is overflowing to the exterior racks leaving them unusable.
The business area has racks, but parking-meter and railing parking is
very common. This area is a central focus of the Transit-Oriented development idea. The city’s thoughts are for a phenominal increase in density here. No comprehensive plan has provided specifics to show how bike parking is intended to be handled. The status now would indicate inadequate accommodation will result. If Transit Oriented development means “Street Car” oriented develpment, then as Emily Litella would say,”Nevermind”.
Tucson always does this:
“We’re going to tear this up in five years, so improvements will have to wait.” Hey, businesses downtown are going to need access during the construction that’s going to block cars. Why not provide for bike access now. It’s not a parking deck we’re talking about….bike parking can be put in and taken out as and where needed. A miniscule percent of the construction budget ought to be able to handle it. The recent tearing-up of 4th Ave. is just a preview of what’s to come for the downtown area. The stodgy approach isn’t going to cut it.
I say we turn all of 4th Avenue into a bike corral. (Hey, a gal can always dream, right?)
It is so funny that I opened Tucson Velo on this post today. I literally just took a photo of the cluttered and chaotic sidewalk outside Wilko at Park and University (potential streetcar conflict site), because I had to lock my bike to a tree. I wanted to use the photo to write a post about the need for more bike corrals in Tucson. You beat me to it!
Karilyn Roach