There was a post on Streetsblog this past Friday about a bill before New York City’s City Council called the “Bikes in Buildings” bill.  As I understand, the problem they’re having is that some employers allow employees to store their bicycles in their offices or even provide a designated area from employees to store their bicycles.  However, some of these employers own or rent their spaces in buildings that are owned or managed by others – others who will NOT allow bicycles in their common areas (lobbies, elevators, hallways, etc.), which means that, while the individual employers may allow bicycles on their own premises, the employees may not be able to get their bicycles from the street to their designated areas if the building owners/managers won’t allow the bike in the common areas. 

Commenter, Doc Barnett, pretty much took the words right out of my mouth with regard to strollers.  While there are plenty of buildings where bicycles are not permitted in common areas (Al actually worked in one years ago…his employer didn’t have a problem with Al storing the bicycle in his office, but the building’s maintenance guy would give Al grief every time he saw him with the bike), I’ve never heard of a building that has banned strollers in common areas such as as lobbies and elevators.  Why is that?  They’re both methods of transportation. 

The Real Estate Board of New York has apparently lost its collective mind.  In my experience, people walking bicycles through crowds are much more careful that people pushing strollers through crowds.  Bicycles are normally walked at the person’s side, not pushed out in front, which can partially or completely block the view of what’s in front of the “driver.”  Especially those huge SUV strollers.  I’ve seen people pushing strollers smash into people and I’ve even seen a little kid get knocked to the ground by a stroller.  I’ve never seen anyone so much as grazed by someone’s bicycle being walked through a building… and a co-worker and I both have ridden our bikes to our office on a semi-regular basis, so it’s not like it’s a rare sight or anything (we’re fortunate that both the owner of the building and our employer allow us to keep our bikes in our offices).  And yet there’s never been an incident, even though we have to carry our bikes up and down the stairs. 

So, I think the Stroller Test is a good test.  If strollers are permitted in the common areas of a building, then bikes certainly should be, as well.  There’s no more of a “liability issue” (and I would argue that there’s less of a liability issue due to visibility) from allowing people to walk their bikes through a building than there is from allowing people to push strollers through a building. 

December 7th, 2008 | Category: Cycling, Environment, Gripes, Health, Work | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL