Hot on Holborn’s heels (at Little Mountain), here are two more fancy-schmancy bike facilities in new buildings.

First, from Portland, where news of Vancouver’s surge in bike riding is making their presumed N.A. cycling mode share supremacy a point of debate.

Michael Anderson at BikePortland.org tells us about the Lloyd Circle Station in the Lloyd 700 Building, which will be open to anyone who ponies up the fee. Open 24 hours, with 600 bike parking spaces, mechanics, lockers, showers, repair stands, bike wash, and a short-term valet parking service, it’s solid bragging rights competition to the upcoming Holborn facility.

Portland’s biggest, baddest bike parking facility is about to open

Though the Cycle Station obviously won’t be for everyone, it’s worth taking a moment to savor this milestone: one of the country’s best bike parking facilities is opening to the public in Portland and operating more or less as a business, planning to make money by giving hundreds of people a place to park their bicycles.

Governments can mandate bike lanes, bike parking and even bike programming. But when private businesses get in on the bike game, biking isn’t just an aspiration or an ideology. It’s a reality.

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It looks as though an entire Portland district (Lloyd) is behind this kind of offering, through a unique transportation-focussed organization called “Go Lloyd“. Biking is only one of the modes they support.

Go Lloyd was founded in 1994 as the Lloyd District Transportation Management Association (TMA). TMAs are public/private partnerships formed so that employers, developers, building owners, and government entities can work collectively to establish policies, programs, and services to address local transportation issues and foster economic development. TMAs are established within a limited geographic area to address the specific needs of their members. . . .

. . . . Go Lloyd creates a thriving environment for business and community by building partnerships, delivering targeted transportation programs, and fostering economic vitality.

lloyd.cycle.station

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Next, from Fastcoexist, news of an office tower in Oslo, Norway, designed by Code Architecture. The building, scheduled for 2020 completion, will have 8,300 sq. m. of solar panels, and significant attention paid to sustainability.  See this PDF for more detail than normal.

The building (Oslo Solar) will feature a large ramp for people on bikes to get to a spiffy parking facility.  Note the cool cargo bike in the illustration. But car parking is limited to a few electric car charging stations.

When it’s completed, Oslo Solar will produce more energy than it uses—and possibly more than any other building in Europe. . .

. . . The design is meant to encourage anyone coming to the building to get there on a bike instead of driving. “There are several trends pointing in that direction,” says Anders Solaas, executive vice president for letting and development at Entra, the building’s developer. “The political leadership in Oslo is crystal clear on [its] large ambitions for increased use of bicycles. Employees are making commuting their daily workout through cycling.”  [Ed. The site is apparently surrounded by public transport, and a major bike route]

Oslo.Solar.1

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Many thanks to Ron Richings and Tom Trottier for the links.

 

 

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  1. I’d love to see some sort of on-demand pay to lock-up facility in downtown Vancouver. The Translink bike lockers are only available monthly and my bike with it’s large and high basket at the front won’t fit into them. Having had a bike stolen from in front of BCIT downtown I’m now very wary of leaving my bike unattended down there and would gladly pay a few bucks to keep it safer.

    1. The bike room at Main St. Station is great but there are no bike paths to get to it so you have to ride on the street and/or the sidewalk to get there. If someone lives in Strathcona or Mount Pleasant and wants to bike to the Skytrain station it’s hard to get to.
      That’s not the fault of the bike room though.

    2. The Main St. Station lockup is great but it’s not really useful for downtown destinations. There must be more cyclists heading downtown who need to leave their bikes unattended than to Science World.

  2. I didn’t fully appreciate the power of just providing a lockable storage area until my mother moved into a highrise that had lots of parking spaces but nowhere dedicated for electric scooters. I negotiated with the landlords to give up the parking space assigned to the unit if they would find a space for her scooter with available power. They canvassed the building and found to their surprise that 5 other people wanted to do the same. All 6 of these old people were still driving their cars only because they had nowhere for a scooter. Three weeks later there was a shiny new space for 6 scooters in the space of one awkward car parking spot, and 5 newly freed-up parking spaces for visitors. The landlord charged a nominal fee for scooter power and e
    veryone won. I’m not saying bicycles are the same — but the similarities just might be striking.

    1. Oh, the similarities of any “unconventional” transportation being left out of design are the same. In the past it was believed that there would only be one way to get anywhere and everything got designed for that. The whole world is now trying to provide some balance to that set up.

      What I’d like to see as far as building codes go, is an area of a building that’s for transportation device storage, whatever that would be. These would be flexible spaces for the people to use whether it’s a cargo bike, mobility scooter or car. The code might also influence things like ramp grades and door widths.
      Also it would be nice if there was a mechanism that if enough people in a building wanted a secure bike or scooter storage room that an existing car parking spot can be caged in and made into one.

    2. That is a great story. Now imagine if that was in one of the developments attached to a rapid transit station, and you could get from your building to the platform indoors, or under cover. The region will then be accessible to seniors who would otherwise be confined.

      Universal accessibility can assume many dimensions beyond perceptions even amongst design professionals that are commonly limited to wheelchair ramps on sidewalks.

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