Laggard

Though Minneapolis sometimes seems to be a bike friendly city with lots of people riding, the city and buildings are bad at supplying bike racks. I mean, we have a couple dozen parking ramps downtown but I can count on one hand the bike racks. Target spent a million bucks on a new store and headquarters but it apparently took them another year to save up for some bike racks.

So I usually lock my bike to a parking meter. Yesterday I leave work to find that the city has removed the meters from in front of my building, leaving the posts. Luckily my bike was still there.

Where do y'all leave your bikes?

prabbit

I'm fortunate that I can bring my bike into my office. There's an empty cube right next to me and it gets parked there. There are three others that work here that sometimes ride their bike and they do the same thing. I think a main reason is that there are no bike racks outside our building. (I work in St. Louis Park -- a suburb of Minneapolis.)

I saw a bike locked to one of the tall-ish posts outside the building yesterday. If I couldn't bring my bike into my office, then I'd be scouting for someplace to park it outside. Not exactly sure where though.

And yesterday I rode into downtown and parked it at the Target Center, where they did think of bikes. There's U-shaped rings bolted into the side of the building. There must have been 30 bikes attached to it -- sometimes two deep.

I haven't parked my bike downtown (I just ride through it--all right, yesterday was the first and so far only time), so I can't give you any insight as to where to park. Is there anyplace in any of the ramps? Bike lockers? There's this link to the City of Minneapolis website. Give them a call if you're wondering where to park. They might be able to help. There's a link to a PDF with all of the racks and lockers in Mpls. Granted the map was made in 1999, but it's something.

https://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/city...es/locker.html

svwagner

At work, I bring the bike in the building. Everywhere else, I'll lock it to just about anything but a bike rack that resembles a pole, has something on top to prevent lifting the bike off, and isn't a tree. Most bike rack configurations just plain suck, especially when there are more than a couple of bikes locked up.

madpogue 

Lobby your elected officials to get more public bike parking, including:
* racks inside the public ramps
* racks on all downtown streets with terraces (easements) or sidewalks wide enough to accomodate them
* rented bike lockers (a revenue source for the city or county, which could subsidize the above)
Pester them constantly until it happens. Get as many members of your city council as possible to join you in pestering the city administrative agencies responsible for it. Any time a bike parking facility is removed, demand an explanation. IOW, make it so that it's easier, cheaper, and less aggravating for them simply to provide what taxpayers demand than to put up with constant citizen badgering.

For private property, go into the business and tell the manager that you're taking your money elsewhere, to a business that provides bike parking.

To combine the above, get an ordinance passed that requires bike parking for businesses, based on size and type of business, amount of land, etc. We have such an ordinance here. I don't know the exact details, but if you're interested in doing something similar in the Mini-apple, lemme know and I'll find the language.

At work, after being on a wait-list for THREE YEARS, I finally got a locker. Elsewhere downtown, there are bike racks, but they're always more full, as a percentage of their capacity, than the parking ramps of which they're anxious to build more at the drop of a hat. On the bright side, the ramps all have bike parking racks. They're crappy racks, but on rainy days, they're a blessing. They're doing a LOT of construction downtown this summer, and have removed a lot of public racks in the process, which has made parking competitive. They never seem to factor the lost business due to absence of safe bike parking into their grand "plans" for these projects.

With private businesses, it's a crap-shoot. Some places are cool, others aren't. I'm surprised at how many businesses said they never thought about it when I call them out on not having bike parking. It's a slow process, but it's improving.