If you travel the city on two wheels, Clement Street just became a more attractive place to park.
Last week, Green Apple had a new bank of bike racks installed in front of their annex at 520 Clement, just a couple doors down from the main store at 506 Clement.
The new bike racks accomodate parking for at least ten bicycles. A metered car parking spot was removed in order for the bike racks to be installed.
Green Apple Books has always been very cyclist-friendly, offering an everyday 10% off discount to members of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC).
According to the Green Apple blog, the SFBC was helpful in their efforts to get the bike rack approved and installed by the city, which took several months.
Sarah B.
Nice. But these really need solid protection poles (as they have at the Main Library) or bike will be damaged by the unique driving situation on Clement.
“One less parking spot”? Nine more parking spots by my count.
Yup, I see quite a few NEW parking spots.
Perhaps that “one less parking spot” comment was in jest, but it really gets tiring when the dominant mode of transportation complains that they a tiny silver of asphalt.
Wow, you guys are so easy to ruffle! 😉 It’s a boon for bikes, no question. I’m glad to see it installed. Just pointing out that we did lose a metered parking spot as well.
Sarah B.
That’s awesome! The more bike parking the merrier!
It’s a boon for the neighborhood, not just cyclists. The average car parked in that spot would hold five people, max- and how often are there more than one or two people in a car there? The bike racks allow room for twice as many customers to park in that same square footage- at a given moment. If one person in one car parks there for one hour, no one else can use that spot for the entire hour. If one person parks one bike there for an hour, there are NINE more slots in the same area for people to come and go over the course of that same hour. There will be fewer bikes locked to the meters and signs down the block, freeing up room for pedestrians on the sidewalk. This is a net gain for the block, nothing was lost here.
I knew I felt a bump recently — in property values when they went up with the creation of new bike parking spaces! Thing is, I hardly think there are enough.
Very nice. I’d love to see several more conversions on Clement, as well as some along side streets near the corner with Geary (19th or 20th maybe?)
I think it’s great. But so close to the bus stop… Hope the bikes don’t get clipped by the 2 or the 44.
When are they going to get meters for these things?
sweet, a 16 wheel capacity increase!
Cool, being that often all those meters on that side of the street had bikes, sometimes the only one available was in front of Best & Fresh Food. However, it did entice me to patronize that venue.
Yaaaaaaaay!
I’m all for bike parking as I bike myself, but this is one of worst executed plans I’ve seen. Just look at the state of those racks, it’s looks like they hired the lowest bidder with the cheapest materials to do this around the city. It’s just a matter of time when you’re going to have someone crash into one of these. It’s a major eye sore.
This is great to see. I’ve bailed on a few trips to Green Apple because the limited bike racks in the area have been fully occupied. Can’t wait to use the new bike racks.
Parking for TEN people in a space typically utilized for one person- that’s smart planning.
I bike parked there yesterday, wonderful!. New facility was full as was the inverted U rack. So at least a dozen more folks spending money on Clement St. vs one motorist. Seems to me we need more bike parking on Clement!
I agree with Rodger that they are not the prettiest racks. I’m not sure in this economic climate we can afford nicer racks though 🙁 I don’t know how these things are paid for.
Lots of neat bike racks available though. Ballard stye might be a little prettier and not as expensive as an all out design contest for the best to be elected by a board of carefully chosen historians and locals.
These things are great though. I think it may improve traffic in that cyclists have an obvious spot to go to lock up instead of hunting down a flimsy sign or long lost single bike hoop. It’s also a lot tougher for a thief to crack the lock when it’s in such an obvious and open area.
It’s good to see that the City is taking bicyclists, and their needs, more seriously. Now that we gained 10 parking spaces out in the street, we need to generate some tax revenue by installing parking meters to pay for those bikes racks and the loss of car parking revenue. A car pays $2 per hour with a 2 hour limit, so for a space fitting 10 bicycles, 20 cents per hour per bike with a two hour limit would be about right. Can’t have people hogging up the bike rack parking for days on end. But wait, how about street cleaning ? That section of sidewalk is never going to get swept by those trucks. And how about the loss of city revenue from those street cleaning tickets the city can no longer cite for this space? At $55 per ticket, the city now loses some $275 per week in revenue. Wait a minute, I guess expired bicycle parking meter tickets will make up some of that loss. $15.00 per ticket sounds about right. Almost worth paying the ticket to park there all day. Of course, it would be free to park on the sidewalk. Let’s start a Department of Human Powered Vehicles (DHPV), and register bicycles to their owners, so we can pay our fair share of taxes for using the roadway like car owners. Maintaining street lights, painting crosswalks, and filling pot-holes cost big bucks. But wait a minute, car owners deserve to pay taxes because they’re evil polluters, and us bicyclists are green and deserve to be tax-exempt free-loaders.