That’s 1000 new bike parking spaces citywide, building on past progress

Over the course of the past two years, BikePGH, in a collaboration with Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, have been steadily installing new bike racks throughout the city’s public rights of way. Aside from keeping bikes secure and preventing theft (which discourages bicycling in general), bike racks ensure that residents and customers feel welcomed and encouraged to arrive on two wheels.

The project just completed, with a grand total of 500 new racks citywide, including 10 new on-street bike corrals.

Click to view map of the 2021-2023 DOMI/BikePGH bike rack installation

This effort was a capstone on a decade-long partnership with the City to install new bike parking in business districts.

Originally under Mayor Ravenstahl, the bike rack program got its start when the Pittsburgh Parking Authority began to replace individual parking meters with kiosks. Meters, for those of us who remember, acted as decent, but not great, bike racks. The program loosely followed the business districts that were losing their parking meters. 

It became clear that business districts that never even had parking meters could benefit from better bike parking, so the program expanded to other neighborhoods.

Starting in 2021, we formed a partnership with DOMI to assist with the public outreach and placement of 500 new racks in business districts, parks, and to fulfill 311 requests.

We are sad to see the program has come to a close, but the partnership has ensured that neighborhood business districts from Beechview to Homewood and everywhere in between, have secure places for customers and employees to lock up their bicycles.

Between our advocacy in 2010 to require bike parking in new buildings, combined with this years-long initiative to outfit parks and business districts, there is now fairly wide coverage of bike parking throughout Pittsburgh.

But there are always more places in need of bike racks.

Click to see the most comprehensive bike rack map in the region.

If you see a public place that needs a rack or an upgrade to an on-street bike corral, take a moment and send a 311 of the location.

There are also plenty of private property locations such as grocery stores or offices in need of bike parking. Unfortunately, the City can’t help when racks need to be placed on private property, but you can help make a difference. Sometimes, it may be as simple as contacting the business owner, stating that you frequent the building, and request a rack. You never know, they may not have one because nobody thought to ask!