After months of advocating for improved bike facilities at many of Metro-North’s most widely used stations, the Bike Walk Alliance of Westchester announced that improvements will finally be coming to North White Plains. As reported by The Journal News, the MTA will build 20 bike parking spaces and add bike lockers as part of a planned 500-space parking garage.
The MTA’s original proposal included just 5-10 bike spots, and was assailed by bike advocates for its failure to significantly accommodate existing bikers and encourage increased biking amongst Metro-North riders. After a grassroots campaign led by the Alliance and the Westchester Cycling Club, and with the support of local, state, and Congressional lawmakers, the MTA modified the plan to include better bike storage facilities.
The station is a natural fit for increased bike parking as it is accessible by the popular off-road Bronx River Parkway bike/pedestrian path. Also, given the high Metro-North ridership at this station, there is potential for more riders to become bike commuters with the addition of these new amenities.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Usroadsman.
And those bicycle parking spaces should be sheltered from the weather. Hopefully that won’t be difficult to do when building a parking garage where there is often odd space leftover that cannot facilitate cars. The bike parking should also be as close to the platform as possible, closer than any car parking spot.
Both the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP) and the Bay Area Rapid Transit Authority (BART) (the only sources to have written publicly available reports on bicycle parking at transit stations) have declared these as minimum requirement for mass transit facilities. Anything less provides inadequate level of service and likely discourages many from wanting to park their bikes at the station for long periods of time.
When traveling in Germany on the train, I notice that almost all bicycle parking at train stations was in a sheltered and convenient location. The parking provided was incredibly abundant, well used and often position directly adjacent to or even on the platform!