Bike storage areas are an essential functional amenity that have become increasingly important for urban residents. As the number of bike riders in Arlington increases, so does the demand for bicycle storage and bike amenities in residential properties. Through Arlington Transportation Partners’ (ATP) work with residential communities and employers, we have seen firsthand growth of bicycling in the County and an increase in bike parking installations.
We love these facilities and want to help you to keep them maintained. Follow these three simple steps to clean out your bike storage room to encourage your residents to bike more.
1. Register Resident Bikes
Download our customizable bike registration form for keeping track of the registered bikes at your property. This will help you keep tabs on how much space is available in your bike room and will make future audits easier to conduct, just as with parking spaces in your garage. You can customize decals and tags with your building’s logo or name and distribute to tenants when they register their bikes.
Then let residents know that you will be removing all bikes not registered with a decal by a specified date. We typically recommend giving residents a months’ notice to register their bikes and receive the decal before removal.
In addition to your own bike registration, we recommend informing residents about ACPD’s registration program. This program allows Arlington police to recover lost or stolen bikes that would otherwise have no way of being returned to their owners. Residents can fill out more than one form for each bicycle they own. Once bikes are registered with ACPD and decals received, registrants have a month to affix their decals to their bike.
Additionally, a good practice is to tag all bikes in the storage room with a bike registration brochure and timeline so that residents know they need to register and decal their bike. Contact us to receive bike registration brochures or download it here (English/Spanish).
2. Donate Unregistered or Abandoned Bikes
After the designated deadline, un-registered and abandoned bikes can be donated to a local non-profit like Phoenix Bikes. Located in Arlington, VA, Phoenix Bikes engages nearly 500 teens a year in its afterschool and summer bicycle repair education program. Youths learn the basics of bike repair, practice their skills on a bike to donate to a neighbor in need and then earn their own bike. The program is free for youth to participate in and all program materials, including bikes, helmets and locks, are provided to program graduates.
Phoenix Bikes relies on donations of unwanted and/or abandoned bicycles to run its youth program. For the donation of multiple bikes, pick-ups can typically be arranged. Call the shop at 703.575.7762 for more information.
3. Enjoy Your Clean Bike Room
Cleaning up the bike room during the winter will ensure that you are ready for spring as May is National Bike Month and includes Bike to Work Day. A clean bike room will create happy residents and employees! Many urban residents use their bikes often and will appreciate the effort made by management to improve their experience of this amenity.
For employers or property managers, become more bike friendly by sharing this information with your employees or tenants. Contact us to learn more about the above programs and additional ways to encourage biking in the community.
Photo Credit: Sam Kittner/Kittner.com
