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Old 04-09-14 | 09:33 PM
  #48  
neil
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Joined: Mar 2009
Posts: 737
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From: Edmonton, Canada
I don't work in tech, but I do work for a company that designs buildings, including buildings used by tech companies. If you've heard of a company, it's a pretty good bet that any new buildings built in the past 10 years or so will include cycling-support facilities, since it's cheap and easy LEED points. The facilities aren't complicated. Our new building (technically 102 years old, but we completely gutted it and rebuilt the interior last year) has a "purpose built" bike storage room: the hallway to the boiler room has a locking door at the end. This seems perfectly adequate for the roughly 30 bikes that turn up on a regular basis when the weather is nice. In larger buildings having something to lock a bike to might be more important, but if yours is the only company with access to whatever storage room gets designated for bikes, you should be fine.

In our case, the exterior door nearest the bike room can be opened with a keyfob so that we don't have to go through the office, but this really isn't as important as it might at first seem. Our old office required walking the bike through the whole office to get to the storage room used for bikes, and this was an office that was pretty cramped for space. It turns out that it's not very disruptive...once it's not a novel idea it's no different to people working nearby than someone walking past. And it's actually better for promoting a bike-commuting culture at an office if your co-workers see you coming and going (ideally you won't be dressed for the tour de france if you want to attract non-cyclists to commuting).

Some of the other buildings we've designed didn't have a good storage room or dead-end hallway available, but we'll still put lock-up facilities inside somewhere. A bike rack in the loading bay or hangers on the wall in an out-of-the way corner are always options. I'm assuming your company uses open-concept design, but if not, then just permission to keep a bike in an office is more than enough.

It sounds like you've already got showers and a change-room thanks to the on-site gym, so that's nice, a real plus for longer commutes.

And all that's just the indoor options. Consider Google's front door: https://www.google.ca/maps/@37.42201...4LnEeQ!2e0!3e5

Last edited by neil; 04-09-14 at 09:41 PM.
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