SlimAgainSoon

Looks cool.

coldfeet

To me, that justs makes it seem more expensive. A swimming pool is a much harder engineering problem, weight of water, sealing problems, protection against corrosion in the the steel. etc.

Don't mean to be excessively negative about this bike park, it's a good thing that they are at least doing something.

We have a similar problem here, they have announced 2 new pedestrian/bike bridges to go up in the next couple of years, 25 million each, give or take. They will be useful, but overdone from a style point of view. I'd have been happier with something a little plainer and had 4 bridges instead. I do like the look of them though, and an attractive city is a nice place to be, so I'm not one of the crowd that is threatening to protest the bridges. Now, can I convince CP rail to hang a pedestrian bridge off the steel bridge into Pearce park? Half million should do it, will simplify my commute tremendously.

Roody

Keep in mind that a more attractive city is the main thing that attracts tourism, and more importantly, new businesses to a region. What would Sydney be without the Harbor Bridge, or New York without it's many beautiful bridges, or London, or Paris, etc., etc.

crocodilefundy

buildings and bridges are symbols of a society. Most American's define them selves with their cars, so why can't a city define itself with its buildings? Travel over to Eastern Europe and look at the boring concrete buildings and you'll never complain about an expensive nice building again. Have you ever traveled to go look at the most cost effective government building? Would you ever go out of your way to investigate a building with no signs or unique features? Clearly if you want people to use a building and enjoy living around a building you need to make it draw attention to itself.

scattered73

Incase of flooding turn upside down and use as boat

Scummer

Hey.. you lived in Heidelberg as well?
I worked up and down the Neckar in the Hydro power plants, but lived between Ziegelhausen and Kleingemuend for about 6 years.

Man, I loved to bike along the Neckar, climbing some of those nasty hills out of the valley or just riding into the city.
Every weekend I would ride along the B-36 down to Karlsruhe to visit my family and old friends.

*sigh*

Thomas

AltheCyclist

One solution: raise property tax on anything zoned "parking lot". Use money for bike stations.

Roody

A building in D.C. that is an architectural showpiece? I'm shocked to think of such a thing!

Making buildings that look nice and work well is not wasteful. After all, Union Station itself could just be a ramshackle pole barn by the side of the tracks.

I-Like-To-Bike

I lived in Reilingen and bike commuted to Heidelberg from 1997 to 2002. Reilingen is a small town located between Hockenheim, home of the racetrack and Waldorf home of the SAP Software HQ. A good portion of my 17.5 Km commuting route was on the main bike route that goes from Heidelberg to the Black Forest and Alsasce (RWW Baden-Würternberg).

Lots of my weekend rides were to Speyer or with a local informal group that would range as far the the the Deutsche Weinstrasse usually taking the off road bike paths almost the whole way.

Another weekend favorite was taking my bike on the Schönes Wochende train ticket to the various locations for day trips. Favorite location were the Bodensee (Lake Constance), Frankfurt or Trier.

The best days trips were with the train to Auto Frei Tag rides on the Moselle, north of Trier.

That was good bike riding.

wahoonc

That looks to me like a perfectly serviceable building... in fact it looks better than quite a few I have seen.

Aaron

I-Like-To-Bike

Certainly looks good enuff to park bicycles out of the weather. I bet Aaron could fit his whole fleet inside of it!

Roody

Yeah, it is a cool barn. My late mother was a "collector" of old barns and she would have loved it. But I don't think even she would have put it in the center of our nation's capitol city!

Sixty Fiver

That is a ridiculous waste of money.

I was thinking that with all the existing car parking facilities we have here that some space could be annexed to make room for more bicycles... one of the biggest office towers here has excellent good rack space located right next to the attendant, is close to the lifts, and is covered by security cameras.

Scummer

Very cool. I didn't know there was a bike path going down to Hockenheim. I mostly rode on the streets or in the Hardtwald forest north of Karlsruhe.
But even riding on the streets was a lot of fun since drivers were much more aware and cautious since bicycles are everywhere.

mike

THAT thing is a bicycle rack?

I was just in DC last week and saw the building at Union Station. I didn't get the impression that it was for storing bicycles. It looks like a rental shop. You would certainly have to be a local to know that it is a bicycle parking garage. There is no signage that I saw describing it as a bicycle parking garage.

Really, I thought it was an elite bicycle rental shop with high prices ($30.00/hour to rent a commuter with gaudy commercial signage all over it).

I just checked it out online. Guess how many bicycles the $4MM facility holds - 100 bicycles! OMG, that structure for only holding 100 bicycles!!! This is just a small window of how Washington is spending all that money they lift from the working class every month.

I tell you, folks, there has to be a LOT more than meets the eye (as in undergound) because there is no way that building can be worth $4,000,000 no matter how much you love bicycles.

Tabor

Do you have a source for this? Is this roads overall? My understanding was that neighborhood streets are only ~7% funded by those things.

BarracksSi

If you had kept checking it out online, surely you would've also seen that they only have about 10-15" (that's inches, not feet) of space to work with under the sidewalk because of the Metro station that runs directly underneath. They couldn't shove a Japanese-style underground bike silo in there if they wanted to.

Political whining aside, yup, that's a lot of money for a covered, secured bike facility without a huge capacity. It's certainly better than the overcrowded racks that are there now, though.