Georgia Avenue Gets More Bike Racks
The section of Georgia Avenue north of Otis Place received several new bike racks at the end of last week. There were several outside of the Looking Glass, a few outside of the Fishermen of Men Church, and a slew on the block between King’s Deli and Ace Check Cashing.
All of these racks are part of the Middle Georgia Avenue Great Streets improvements. While I’m grateful that we finally have much needed bike racks on this stretch, especially in the area around Looking Glass, Blue Banana, and the future DC Reynolds … I’m a bit disappointed that all that was installed are the basic black racks.
To me, while the basic racks are ok, they aren’t great — and this was a “Great Streets” project. I would have preferred something more artistic and special for Georgia Avenue. I don’t think that would have been too much to expect since DDOT has worked with local artists to develop special bike racks for other parts of the city including Eastern Market, Chinatown, and other locations around the city. To me, Georgia Avenue deserves no less.
Some of the artistic bike racks DDOT introduced in 2009
Tags: bikes, Georgia Avenue corridor, Great Streets, Park View
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Park View, D.C. 
December 12, 2011 at 7:24 am
I agree Kent, also that area by LGL (now that DDOT made a step up in front of LGL) is narrow. By making the bike racks go north and south instead of east west it might make foot traffic flow a little better.
December 13, 2011 at 10:49 am
It happens that this is my business, although we are still in the start up phase. There’s lots that can be done to improve bike parking, but artistic racks aren’t necessarily the best solution, as frequently the racks are made in ways that promote art but not best practice in bicycle parking.
Thanks for leading me to write this entry (which dovetails with a contract we are working on now for one of the city’s highest profile future developments).
http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2011/12/best-or-at-least-better-practices-in.html
Note that in the ANC4B Large Tract Review committee response, for which I was the lead author, we made the point that the streetscape redesign effort also failed to take into account plans for streetcar service on Georgia Avenue, and therefore neglected to include the installation of streetcar tracks as part of the project.
Now, if the streetcar does come, the road will have to be torn up for the installation of the rails and railbed.
December 16, 2011 at 7:02 am
[…] I reported at the start of the week, quite a number of new bike racks were installed last week on the section of Georgia Avenue between […]