If they can have handicap parking, wheelchair ramps, and other accessibility features (rightfully so!), what’s the problem with helping businesses to make their stores accessible by bike?
Everyone wants to support “buy local”, and there’s no better way to do it than by bike!
Seems like installing a simple bike rack would be a win-win-win all around. What exactly is the difficulty?
I don’t believe for a second that it’s a “they don’t know unless you tell them” problem, because I’ve contacted many, MANY stores and plaza management to let them know that they are losing business. Nothing changes.
And it’s not like they can’t see people locking their bikes to signs, trees, fences, or cluttering up the walkways because they have no other options when visiting their business.
Backstory: Over the last two years, I’ve been adding cycling infrastructure to OpenStreetMap. Stuff like bike lanes, bike parking, repair stands, etc. I’ve spent dozens of hours checking plazas in a 30 km radius, local storefronts, malls, etc., to see what options they offer. It’s SHOCKING to see how many have absolutely no bike parking. Large stores, post offices, coffee shops, or even gyms. I try to contact as many as I can, but almost never receive replies or acknowledgement. Contacting local representatives is even more futile, as they have no control over what these businesses do. This means I’m either going far out of my way to visit stores that have bike parking, or I take a car, which seems like madness either way.
I can only speak for my region, which consists of eight municipalities totaling around 700,000 people, but most plazas and strip malls are quite accessible by bike, especially newer ones, which have bike infrastructure leading up to them.
Regardless, for such a small investment in a bike rack, even one customer on a bike per week will make it worth while.
I, myself, live downtown Toronto so bike infrastructure is plenty (though of course can always be better). That said, the further from downtown the less hospitable it can be biking with large roads and less road law enforcement that has some priority for biking. Then there’s the suburb towns that are only now considering really bike infrastructure and areas outside the GTA that are nowhere near building it. I agree it wouldn’t hurt anyone to have bike racks around as a start, but it shouldn’t be the only starting point if we want people to really use them.
Yeah, the few times that I’ve biked to Toronto, I’m amazed by how many people are riding and how robust (not perfect, though) the bike infrastructure is.
I will say that newer development here (Durham Region) often have cycling infrastructure baked in. So multiuse paths, bike parking at bus stops, bike lanes, etc. are more and more common.
Cycling these days is always a tradeoff. I don’t mind not riding in protected lanes, if my destination has bike parking; and my entire ride could be on cycling infrastructure right until I get to my destination, then nothing. There needs to be consistency and continuity for anything to work right.