Private Parking Lots Forced To Offer Space For Bikes In Buenos Aires

In a city where bike theft is a very good reason to make you doubt about riding somewhere, providing parking facilities is almost as important as creating new bike paths.

This is the case in Buenos Aires (and many cities around the world), and the reason why it's so good to hear that the government has pushed a new law to provide several bike-parking facilities, including spaces inside private parking lots at lower rates. If you ride in Buenos Aires or are thinking about doing it, you need to read this.

There are different actions the government is pushing to provide bike parking, as another part of its Mejor en Bici program. The most important being the obligation for all private parking lots to offer 8 bike spots for every 50 vehicle spots they have, at a rate that can never be higher than 10% of the car fare.

Why is this amazing? Private parking spots are everywhere in the city and provide a much more safer environment to leave your bike than racks, and they almost never offer space for bikes. With this new law, they are forced to do it and if they don't you can report them at the nearest citizen participation center (CGP).

Apart from this measure, the government is placing 350 new bike racks all over the city and is announcing another 550 will be put to tender. The idea is to place these next to subway stations.

They're also building parking facilities next to train stations, which will offer whole day parking for the very cheap price of one peso (about 25 US dollar cents), the first one next to major transport hub Constitución.

Even if Buenos Aires is pretty far from being Copenhagen (a.k.a. bike heaven), it's nice to see a city push bike riding not only with a few bike paths but with a thorough and consistent program.

From Treehugger.com