I gave a presentation in May 2010 to staff members at the Active Transportation Alliance to 1) fill them on my project 2) summarize for them my project's purpose and findings and how it can affect bike infrastructure in the City of Chicago, something about which they have a concern (like many people here).

I created this page to assist in my presentation, adapting it from multiple parts of my project. Some parts were removed in order to display this publicly.

I recently graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a master's degree in urban planning. My final project is about Bike Parking Equity.

I'm here today to discuss this project, my findings, and how it fits into the work of CDOT and possibly the Active Transportation Alliance.

The project was born from a discovery a couple of years ago.

In 2008, the CDOT Bicycle Parking Program, myself included, listed all the requests for bike parking in our database and we went and surveyed the requested locations, installed bike racks at many of the locations.

Also in 2008, we looked on a map at what we created with our web application and realized, “Something does not seem right here.” I performed the first data analysis in August 2008 - by then, it was too late to do anything about the observed distribution issue for that year).

The Chicago RedEye “exposed” this issue in November 2009.

Figure 1

Map shows a point for each bike rack location installed until October 2009

Figure 2

Map compares activity in 2008 with activity in 2009. While more racks were installed (over double) in 2009, they were also better distributed.

Figure 3

Map created by Chicago Red Eye, published in November 2009

See also Equity.

Equity is “a concern for the fairness of the distribution of costs and benefits.”

Equity is often described as an impact on people, or as a problem experienced by certain groups. There are many ways to describe equity.

Geographic distribution is an issue that CDOT wants to address.

The first part of the distribution problem is that bike parking is not equitably distributed in Chicago (which I described in Part 1). The second part of the problem is determining why this is and then figuring out how to deal with that.

Under the current Bicycle Parking Program model, the decisions to place bike racks at many locations in Regions A and B were not based on a calculated or observed need, but purely based on requests from residents, workers, and business owners of those regions. The equity impact developed from a request prejudice that presents itself in the geography of the Regions.

Because of the way the Bicycle Parking Program (BPP) operates, bike racks are distributed mostly by request. So people in the areas without bike parking just aren't requesting them. This doesn't mean that there aren't bikers in each Ward. According to data from 2000 (the last year from data is available), there are bikers going to each Ward for work, and bikers leaving each Ward to go to work somewhere else. It's not that simple.

The people who live, bike, or want to bike in these areas may not (these reasons are discussed in more depth on this page):

• Don't know what bike parking is
• Don't know why it's useful to them
• Don't know how to request it
• or, Don't know locations for which to make a request

I'll ask you for your input in a couple of minutes.

To reverse the status quo, we need to develop outreach strategies that address the reasons why people don't request bike parking.

ActiveTrans has the resources and connections to many communities to assist CDOT in understanding why people don't request bike racks, and then developing strategies to address those reasons, so that bike parking is equitably distributed in Chicago.

See slide 3. Can we suggest additional reasons for why we don't receive bike parking requests from many areas of the city, including in the Underserved Wards?

Additional reasons offered during the discussion:

• People don't know how the bike parking program or bike parking works. That is, people may believe that the City or businesses deliberately decide where each and every bike rack gets installed.
• Relatedly, citizens don't know that they CAN request a bike rack.
• They don't know the costs of requesting a bike rack, or having one installed
• They don't know the difference between public (allowed) and private (not allowed) property and how that affects bike rack surveying and installation. For example, we can install bike racks on property of Chicago Public Schools, Park District, and Transit Authority.

Education outreach opportunities. “In what kinds of events does ActiveTrans participate would be good opportunities to deliver outreach?” Response not listed.