How to park a bike

Do you know how to park a bike?   Sure you do.  

It's a bit like parking a car.  You pull up somewhere close to where you are going, make sure you are not in anyone's way, lock it, and be on your way.

Wait, are we talking about the car or the bike? 

Well in Portlandia, it doesn't matter.  Both cars and bikes park in the same place.

Here's how it works.

Look at this picture.   Notice the bike racks are in the street in the same place where the cars usually park.  

What the people of Portandia did was to take a parking space meant for a car - one whole entire parking space - and make it into a bicycle parking space instead.

The difference is, you can fit about 10 bicycles into a single car parking space but you can only fit one car. 

Wow!  That means if everyone rode a bike, we would have way more room on the street for other stuff like plants and trees and benches and beauty because we wouldn't need so much room for parking spaces for cars.

Plus the bike riders wouldn't have to wonder where to park their bikes so they aren't in someone's way and they wouldn't have to wonder what to lock their bikes to.  This parking space has a rack.

Plus security.  I mean really.  Who is going to steal a bike from a parking space like this – right out on the road next to the car parking spaces?  If you thought you could get away with stealing a bike from such a public space, you might as well go ahead and steal the car parked in the next space over instead.  The car is probably worth a lot more.

GroveAtopia could do this.   Lots and lots of us ride our bikes all over town.  If we had a respectable parking space downtown – and in GroveAtopia, we would only need one space – our bicycles would always know, without a doubt, where to park.  They would not block the sidewalk.  They would be safe.  And they would not doubt their choice – the bicycles would know it was okay to park there.

Yep.  One car parking space downtown ought to do it.  That's all we would need.  That's all it would take.