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Where the Bicycle Racks Are

In February 2023, Amsterdam opened a new underwater bicycle parking facility. Image Credit (Bicycle Dutch)

If we knew the places we plan to visit have reasonably secure and convenient bike racks, then the decision to pedal there would be an easy one. On the contrary, if there’s no good place to park the bike, we would choose (a) a different equivalent service with a better bike parking, or (b) drive a car if the said service had no substitute. Below is a list of different local maps for Bryan/College Station area, that could tell us this bit of useful information.

Laurel’s BCS Bike Map

Our friend, Laurel, took it upon herself the immense task of cataloging the bicycle racks across twin cities over the past year. She took such care as to even include the photos, to show what these racks look like in real life, along with the time of last confirmation. Shown below is the resulting interactive map.

  • Different layers can be toggled on/off, such as Bike Lanes, Bike Routes, Multi-Use Paths, and Bike Parking.
  • Clicking on Bike Parking spots shows more detailed info, including photos on many, as well as last confirmed date.
  • If starred, this map will be available to view on your Google Maps, desktop or mobile. Follow this instruction: View your My Maps using Google Maps (support.google.com)

A static map with infrequent updates would be less helpful than a crowd-sourced one that has many eyes and hands on continuously. Laurel’s map invites users to add missing or update outdated information, by submitting this form. (https://forms.gle/yeYJQgzHhBkz9Zkd9)

City of College Station – Bike Map

City of College Station offers a similar Bicycle Map, which includes bike rack locations throughout the city, as well as bike lanes & bike routes.

Image Credit: City of College Station (https://cstx.maps.arcgis.com)

Credit must be given to the city of College Station that dataset exported from their source gave a rich starting point for Laurel to build on. Especially the data for “Proposed, Planned & Funded” gives us a hopeful glimpse of better connected network.

City of Bryan – Bicycle Routes

City of Bryan also offers the map of Bicycle Routes. It serves the titled purpose, and does not yet include locations of bicycle racks.

Image Credit: City of Bryan (https://maps.bryantx.gov/bike/)

Please leave comment below if Bryan does have more relevant data available. The motivation behind Laurel’s map was to have a consolidated map that would cover both cities and the campus, for a seamless travel across these articifial boundaries.

Texas A&M University – Bike Map

Speaking of the campus, TAMU Bike Parking Map appears inactive at the time of this writing. Perhaps it used to work at some point in the past, and is no longer maintained or offered.

Image Credit: Texas A&M University (https://transport.tamu.edu/parkingmap/bike/)

Subjectively speaking, cycling on-campus is a comparatively more relaxed experience compared to off-campus. With few exceptions, almost all buildings have up-to-date, conveniently-located, and well-utilized bicycle parking. As the Sustainable Transportation team work diligently to ensure this quality service, I would encourage them should give themselves more credit by making this achievement readily visible.

What do you think about these maps? How can they be made more useful?

Veloway

The idea, I have for the velo way, is for it to circle the outer perimeter of park approximately 2 miles. It would have to be 12 foot wide, with a asphalt surface (cement cracks) with a white line painted down the middle to split the slower cyclist from the faster cyclist with everyone going clock wise. At any of the intersection with cars, the velo way would have to be raised at least 6 inches so to create a speed bump for the cars that travel through the intersection plus a stop sign giving the cyclist the right of way.

Before the intersection, designing a curve in the velo way to naturally slow down the cyclist would also help. Any pedestrian traffic would have to yield to the cyclist also. With the park having only one egress and one entrance, I don’t think this idea should be much of a problem.

The velo way will be for cyclist only and or maybe in line skaters but no pedestrians, no skate boards or any kind of motorized vehicle. Cyclist traveling at plus 25 miles an hour can not be playing dodge the people walking at 2 miles an hour.

I know this sounds like a dream but I think it is a good place to start. One of the important points is trying to make velo way as close to 2 miles as possible, smaller loops are much more monotonous becoming more of a criterion course with too many sharp turns in it.

Robert VAN BRUNT