NYC DOT Prepares for 12,000 Parking Meter-to-Bike Rack Conversions

The Post reported some good news this morning: NYC DOT has contracted with Louis Barbato Landscaping to make 12,000 bike racks that can be affixed to defunct single-space parking meter poles.

A few years ago, when DOT started phasing out single-space meters en masse and replacing them with Muni meters, it seemed like there was no plan to replace these de facto bike parking spaces. But since DOT has been quick on its feet to repurpose the old meters, thousands of them are going to be upgraded into bike racks.

DOT has retrofitted defunct parking meters as bike parking neighborhood by neighborhood over the past few years — accounting for about 200 new bike racks, according to the Post. With this bulk purchase, it looks like the bike rack conversions are going to scale up significantly.

For comparison, the new bike rack order far exceeds the total number of CityRacks in NYC right now, which is about 8,500. And as Gothamist points out, it’s double the number of parking meter conversions DOT was planning for about a year ago. At the same time, there were about 80,000 single-space meters before the Muni meter conversion started, so most of the old parking meters aren’t going to be maintained as bike parking.