Downtown bike parking

Picture courtesy of Google maps
Finally we have a covered, secure bike parking solution for downtown commuters. Jon and I visited Lu today at the City Ramp Garage and took a tour of the tire room. The tire room is a huge vault of a room in the basement of the garage. The tire room is now the bike room.

Here are the details:

• The City Ramp Garage is at 1st and Stevens.
• To get the bike room, you can ride down the ramp -- no stairs.
• It's $1/day.
• You must register to use the service. This is a good thing as it keeps only registered people coming and going to the bike room. That said, you still want to lock the bike once you get it down there.
• There is a bathroom you can use to change, but no showers or lockers (yet).
• There is a car washing station that you can use to spray down your bike.
• Hours are M-F 7am-9pm; Sat 10-6. When the garage is closed, the ramp leading to the bike room has a giant roll down gate; so leaving bikes there over the weekend is very secure.
• It's early days. The room is a dirty mess and stuffed with tires. But you can't beat the price and Lu is interested in moving out the tires and optimizing the room for storing bikes. She's excited about the potential to make this a useful service. The more cyclists that use this service, the better the service will become.
• The building is sweet. Lots of nooks and crannies. I found an old Mr Pibb can way in the back of the tire room. I also found an old set of Carl Maxey's winter tires. And the building is art deco. Cool.

If you want to use the service, just show up and fill out a registration form and pay $1/day. There is no long term obligation or requirement to pay weeks/months in advance.

The phone number there is 624-1313.