Columbus, OH unveiled a few stretches of downtown scooter/motorcycle parking today. With the scooter-hype lazy-media assault ramped up an extra notch today, and a couple high-profile fatal scooter accidents in recent days, it’s great to see some good news about a quantifiable change taking place.
2 thoughts on “A Ride To Work Day present for Columbus”
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I was thrilled to park in one of the new designated spots. The city will keep these as free parking for the first year and then decide how to collect revenue either from yearly sticker fees or parking meters (although meters would limit the number of bikes). When I pulled in this morning I talked with some of the city workers painting the parking boxes in the alley. They were very supportive and nice and told me they’d already gotten a car ticketted for attempting to illegally park in the spot. I guess the driver ran over the cones and parked on the still wet paint. The workers saw the car and called the cops who arrived just as the person was trying to drive off – complete with white paint on the tires and a cone still stuck under their car.
Thanks to http://scooterparking.wordpress.com for pulling together the people who made this happen so rapidly. From the major parking ticket sweep to now having city approved official spots (which are even more prevelent than what we had illegally) took about 2 months. That’s amazing!
This is truly great news, to have something tangible happen in such a short period of time since the ticket fiasco. In his speech the Mayor thanked many folks, including Jeff Mathes at Due Amici as well as the Columbus Cuttters Scooter Club (he thanked the Cutters about 5 times, in fact. I think he liked saying “Cutters”). Jeff apparently gave the Mayor and councilwoman O’Shaughnessy an article about cities getting ahead of the scooter parking need. And members of the Cutters put together a document outlining concerns and suggestions on the parking issue. It was sent to Mike Brown, the Mayor’s Urban Ventures Cooridinator. Mr. Brown and members of the Cutters met and discussed the options and implimentation strategy.
As for the Gay St. corral in front of Due Amici, the narrow spot works very well if you park parrallel to the sidewalk. 7 scooters fit in it for the press conference. The city may put stripes to guide how to park in it if people don’t park parrallel as designed.