PRESS RELEASE: DowntownDC BID Completes Three-Year Plan to Nearly Double Bike Parking

Tues. January 5, 2016

Washington, D.C. – The DowntownDC Business Improvement District (BID) last week completed a three-year plan with the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) to nearly double bike parking in the BID’s 138-block area, increasing the overall number of bike racks from 531 in 2012 to 964.

“All Downtown residents, workers and guests benefit from an increase in bike parking in the BID,” said DowntownDC BID Executive Director Neil O. Albert. “Bike parking availability not only encourages biking as a sustainable means of transportation that reduces congestion, but parking racks help maintain order in pedestrian areas and in-street parking spaces.”

Over the past three years, contractors working with the BID and DDOT implemented a three-phase plan to install black U-racks in locations identified by the BID with input from property owners and BID stakeholders. Each rack provides parking for two bicycles.

In 2013, Metropolitan Industries installed 145 racks between 6th and 11th streets NW. In 2014, BicycleSPACE installed 195 racks between 11th and 16th streets NW as well as four in-street bike parking corrals, which each accommodate 10 bikes. In 2015, BicycleSPACE completed the plan, installing 93 additional racks east of 6th Street NW.

In 2014, 4 percent of D.C. residents and workers commuted by bike, according to the American Community Survey, One Year Estimate. The District’s Sustainable DC Goal is for 75 percent of commutes to be non-auto by the year 2032. In 2014, 57 percent of commutes were non-auto.

Increasing bike parking is one of many ways in which the BID supports bicycling in Downtown. The BID also works with partners on additional biking-related efforts including the establishment of dedicated and protected bike lanes in Downtown, support for Capital Bikeshare’s short-term bike rentals—a service that was piloted in the BID in 2008 as the country’s first bikesharing system—and promoting biking to the public, including by hosting the largest Bike to Work Day pitstop in the District, which is held annually on Bike to Work Day in Freedom Plaza in Downtown.

The DowntownDC BID won the Washington Area Bicyclist Association’s 2015 Bicyclists’ Choice Award for bike friendliest neighborhood or business improvement district.