Montclair bicycle parking initiative gets a boost Montclair Planning Board member Jacob “Jake” Nieman was riding his bike along South Fullerton Avenue on his way to get a haircut. When he arrived at Classic Man Cut & Shave, he realized there was no place to park his bike. He ended up walking down the street and tying his ride to a street sign.
As he headed back to the barber shop, Nieman noticed that there were a number of empty parking meter posts lining the street. When Montclair’s streets were redesigned a few years ago, paid street parking by meter was taken away and replaced with payment kiosks. What remains of the decommissioned parking meters are holes in the concrete with metal poles protruding.
Passing these unused poles sparked an idea in Nieman that may provide a solution to some bike parking problems in the near future.
“In previous conversations with Jason Gleason, who runs the BID, I learned that basically the biggest cost to installing a bike rack, because I asked him about installing one on Church Street, is digging into the concrete,” Nieman said.
“The rack itself may be only a couple hundred dollars, but digging into that concrete can make one bike rack cost $5,000 to $10,000. So, I saw these poles sitting in the ground that already had the hole, all they needed was a rack attached to them, and it cuts off some huge percentage of the cost of a bike rack.”
Later that January day, Nieman sent an […]
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