A massively untapped opportunity for people-first transportation
Bicycling infrastructure is widely understood as essential to increasing bicycle use, and increasing bicycle use is good for cities — for public health, for emissions, for congestion, and for the vitality of local economies.
Infrastructure for bicycling means two things. First, making the travel phase safe and comfortable, from protected bikeways to calmer streets. It also means ensuring a convenient way to land and leave the bike securely at the destination. Both are necessary. For bicycling to genuinely flourish as a mode of transportation, the full journey has to work — and that includes what happens when you arrive.
E-bikes make this even more important. They expand access for people who couldn’t or wouldn’t otherwise ride — those with longer commutes, hillier terrain, physical limitations, or households trying to shed a car. But e-bikes are heavier, bulkier, and significantly more valuable than conventional bikes, raising the bar for what good parking needs to deliver.
Wrinkle
Bicycle parking is the most underleveraged element of bicycle infrastructure policy. Many cities have some form of bicycle parking requirement for new development, but beyond that, policy tends to be thin.
The problem compounds because bad parking is often invisible to the people who set policy and install bike parking. Those who ride regularly have already adapted — they know which destinations are worth the hassle and which aren’t. The trips that never happen, the people who never started riding, the e-bike that stayed in the garage after one theft don’t show up in the data. Bicycle parking fals in the cracks between transportation planning, building codes, and private property decisions, and tends to get shortchanged by all three.
Car parking, by contrast, has well-developed design specifications, enforcement mechanisms, and legal requirements. Bicycle parking largely doesn’t. What gets installed is often whatever was cheapest or easiest — racks that don’t support the frame, placement that blocks pedestrians, facilities that feel unsafe after dark. Until bicycle parking is held to a comparable standard, the gap between aspiration and experience will persist.
Way forward
Communities need to build a communitywide network of high quality bicycle parking facilities grounded in clear standards, mapped to real demand, built out through coordinated investment, and designed to improve over time.
1. Establish a clear standard for what good bicycle parking looks like
Every place where people park cars is a place where people need to park bikes, and every bicycle parking facility should meet national best-practice design standards. That means attending to short-term and long-term parking needs, accommodating bicycles of all sizes including cargo bikes and e-bikes, and ensuring access for users of all abilities. It also means being honest that substandard bicycle parking can do more harm than good — a rack that damages a bike frame or fails to prevent theft discourages the very behavior cities are trying to encourage — and creating a clear pathway to replace facilities that fall short. More…
2. Map out a complete bicycle parking network
Cities should identify every location where bicycle parking is needed for the community to have a truly complete system. This mapping should be grounded in a theory of change — an understanding of how a well-designed network maximizes bicycle use by minimizing theft, building user confidence, and making cycling feel convenient and reliable at every destination. The result should describe the overall size of the network, the number and type of target facilities, key strategic considerations, and what the system looks like when fully built out. That vision is what transforms bicycle parking from a collection of individual installations into an actual network.
3. Make a real-world buildout plan
A complete network requires a credible path to implementation. That means establishing phases that prioritize the highest-demand locations first, strengthening code requirements for new development, and driving installations in the existing built environment through education, technical assistance, reduced red tape, and targeted requirements for key sites. Cities should lead by example — developing a written policy for bicycle parking on city property and rights-of-way, incorporating new installations into the capital budget, and deploying at scale in ways that showcase best practices and generate lessons for private owners and community partners. Bicycle parking planning should be integrated with bike network planning and broader community plans so the pieces reinforce each other, with careful attention to maintenance and long-term costs from the start.
4. Facilite high-reward investments
Building a complete bicycle parking network is a major, long-term capital undertaking — and like any major capital undertaking, it requires active management to stay on track and deliver results. That means developing a coordinated investment plan that sequences installations strategically, concentrates early resources on the highest-demand and highest-visibility locations, and tracks progress against the overall network vision. Bulk procurement can drive down unit costs and raise quality across installations. Co-investment programs and incentives can bring private development into alignment with public priorities, stretching city dollars further. Design partnerships with universities, school districts, business districts, transit agencies, and other large centers of demand can accelerate deployment where the need is greatest. The aim is a plan that is actively managed — one that maximizes what gets built, minimizes waste, and keeps the community moving steadily toward a complete network.
5. Extend parking reform to bicycles
Cities across the country are eliminating parking minimums for cars, recognizing that parking design is a powerful inducer of travel, and mandating abundant car storage has come at enormous cost to urban land, housing affordability, and street life. That same logic applies directly to bicycles — and bicycle parking is far cheaper, more space-efficient, and more flexible than its car counterpart. Parking reform efforts should explicitly incorporate bicycles by revisiting minimum and maximum requirements, applying design standards with the same rigor as car parking codes, and using the momentum of broader parking reform to close the policy gaps that have left bicycle parking chronically underdeveloped. It should also provide direction and support to directly replace car parking with bicycle parking,
6. Build for the future
A great bicycle parking network is never fully finished. User feedback should inform ongoing design improvements, and lessons from early phases should sharpen the efficiency and quality of later ones. The rapid growth of e-bikes — and the increasing diversity of bike formats they represent — requires planners to think ahead about how facilities will need to evolve. And what cities learn through this work has value beyond their own boundaries. Sharing experience and insight with other communities fosters a national culture of excellence in bicycle parking and accelerates progress everywhere.
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