This Sunday, April 22nd is the Detroit Tiger’s Ride your bike to the Ball Park day. Tickets for this event are on sale only until midnight tonight.

The Changing Gears web site posted this article about the event as well as cycling in Detroit.

The team is hosting its first Ride to the Ballpark event, testing its theory that baseball fans and bicyclists are one and the same.

“Detroit has a very cool, strong cyclist culture,” says Eli Bayless, the Tigers’ director of promotions and in-game operations.

The Tigers are offering a $14 package that includes an upper deck ticket to the game, and a ticket for a bicycle valet. Cyclists will pull up to Columbia Plaza in front of Comerica Park’s Gate A entrance, and check their bikes.

Of course you can ride to the ball park any day. On Sunday, you just won’t be able to use the valet parking without this special ticket.

There are bike racks located in the parking lots near the northwest corner of the ball park.

Group rides to the Game

There are three group rides planned to the ballpark.

• American Cycle and Fitness will lead a ride promptly starting at 11am from their Royal Oak store at 29428 Woodward Avenue, just north of 12 Mile.
• The Downtown Ferndale Bike Shop will be leaving the shop at 11:30am. Their located at 163 W. Nine Mile, just west of Woodward.
• And a group is starting at 11am with a breakfast at Louie’s Deli at Mack and Riopelle near Eastern Market. After eating, they’ll take a leisurely ride to the ballpark.

As Bayless told Changing Gears, they’re hoping this will become an annual event and spur the organization to do more to accommodate cyclists.

There has been a spattering of bike parking articles and news lately.

What Would Get Americans Biking to Work? Decent parking.

Slate magazine has an excellent article on the state of bike parking in many American urban centers.

If car parking is often overshadowed in traffic talk, bicycle parking is even more obscure. For many people in the United States it might be hard to imagine what there is to talk about. Why don’t you just stick it in the garage? Or: Isn’t that what street signs and trees are for? But as the share of trips made by bicycle has grown in recent years in Portland, Ore., for example, bicycle use has grown nearly 150 percent since 1990, and an estimated 5 percent of people bike to work new attention is being paid to what happens to those bicycles when they are not in motion.

With the city of Detroit revising their zoning parking requirements, we made sure to pass this article along to them. It was passed along to the city’s Municipal Parking Department to let them know about the opportunity to reuse old parking meters for bike parking as mentioned in the article.

In Chicago, Los Angeles, and other cities, pilot projects are investigating turning car-parking meters once semireliable bike-parking spots, now rendered obsolete by “smart meter” payment systems into bike parking infrastructure.

The parking department owns 11 parking structures. The idea has been raised at Green Task Force meetings that these garages all should have bike racks.

Also, the author of the article, Tom Vanderbilt writes an excellent blog called How we drive. While not solely focused on biking, it’s definitely worth reading.

A new benchmark in bike parking?

The AIA published a recent article about a new bike parking facility in Washington D.C.

This sustainable transit facility, designed by KGP Design Group of Washington, will feature approximately 150 bike rack parking spaces, changing rooms, personal lockers, and retail spaces for bike repair and bike accessories, all in a secure and semi-enclosed environment next door to a major interstate rail link and a station in the city’s Metro subway system. At the transit center, patrons will be able to sign up for memberships or pay a small fee per day to lock their bike in one of the secure double height bike racks that will take up two-thirds of the building’s space. The $3 million project is being funded by the District of Columbia Department of Transportation, and is currently scheduled to open in the fall.

Detroit’s probably not ready for something of this scale, but we’re probably not too far away either. This type of bike parking would certainly complement the planned Woodward light rail, Ann Arbor commuter rail, not to mention the potential high-speed rail and Detroit River ferry projects.

The question is where would it be located? Near the new Rosa Parks Transit Center? On the RiverWalk? At the Amtrak station at the New Center? Campus Martius? What would you consider an ideal location in downtown Detroit?

New bike rack at Comerica Park

The Detroit Tigers have installed the first of two bike racks at Comerica Park. It’s located in parking lot 3, which is on the northwest side of the stadium, near the corner of John R and Montcalm. The other bike rack is planned for the opposite side of the stadium.

Valet bike parking at Arts, Beats, and Eats

Convenient bike parking is returning to the Arts, Beats, and Eats event in Pontiac thanks to KLM Bikes and Fitness. Not only is the event and parking free, they will give you a $3 in food and beverage tickets. The bike parking is located on Water Street just west of Woodward and near the entrance to the Phoenix Parking Garage.

More information on the bike parking as well as bike directions to the event is on the Arts, Beats, and Eats web site.

Portland: Attracting or Converting

There was an interesting article in Boston.com that discusses Portland, the apparently self-annointed Bike City USA.

One question: “Is [Portland] just filling a niche and attracting bicyclists from elsewhere, instead of changing the habits of residents?

According to Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder, “We’re not draining the world of people who like to ride bikes. It’s facilities that make people switch over, not philosophy.’’

But perhaps the best quotes are from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in response to George Will.

Even if they could be replicated, however, the city’s policies have also made it a lightning rod for criticism from conservatives, who have derided the administration’s embrace of the city. Newsweek columnist George Will referred to Portland as “the P word’’ in a column in the spring and accused officials of pursuing “behavior modification’’ to coerce people out of cars.

In an interview with the Globe, LaHood said that such critics were “living in the past’’ and that continuing to build more highways was also coercive. “We’ve created a system that requires people to get in their cars if they want to get anywhere,’’ he said.

Cyclists and pedestrians have lived through over 80 years of coercion. It took a while, but the pendulum is swinging back a little.

Portland: How much for a used bike?

One side effect of more Portlanders taking up cycling is their used bike prices have increased.

Thankfully we haven’t heard of a similar price rise in Detroit. Such an increase could keep many Detroiters from jumping into the sport.

New York: Biking on the rise

WCBS TV has quoted  City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan saying biking is New York City’s “fastest growing mode of transportation.”

And article continues with:

The number of cyclists has jumped by 80 percent in the past decade — to 185,000 among the more than 8 million city denizens.

City officials say they’ve worked to make the city more biker friendly. They note the hundreds of miles of marked bike paths created in recent years, safety awareness campaigns and handouts of free helmets to unprotected cyclists.

Over that time, bicycle accidents have fallen more than 40 percent.

Unfortunately we do not know the number of cyclists on the road. The only information we have is from the Census Bureau. They keep track of the percent of people who bike to work. The percentage is low enough to not be very useful. In addition it does not include those cycling for transportation outside of work or for recreation. Children and seniors are also not included in the Census numbers.

Given the economy and proposed bus cuts in Detroit, the fastest growing mode of transportion in the city might be biking or walking.

Detroit is Lonely

Brian Kennedy is a former Detroiter now living in Chicago. And he’s a cyclist.

He recently visited Detroit and wrote this interesting ride report.

There are some updates to his story:

• Comerica Park has or will soon install two bike racks near the stadium
• Secondhand sources say that DDOT buses will have three-bike racks by Spring 2010. There had been some debate between the two- and three-bike racks, which are from different manufacturers.
• Through my job with MTGA, I have been in contact with Brian and the Active Transportation Alliance about getting roll-on service for Amtrak trains running between Chicago, Ann Arbor, and Detroit. (“Roll-on” means you can roll your bike onto the train without having to disassemble or box it.) With the great cycling environment in all three cities, this seems like it could become very popular.

Brian also plans on returning for the Tour-de-Troit next month — and he plans on riding the Dequindre Cut and visiting the Honey Bee Super Mercado, too.

Like other baseball stadiums around the country, the Detroit Tigers are looking at steps they can take to reduce their environmental impact of the games.

And to help highlight their efforts, they hosted a Going, Going, Green event at Comerica Park.

The event included many green-oriented booths including one for the Michigan Trails and Greenways Alliance (MTGA). I was at the booth for Saturday and Sunday to share information on trail efforts throughout Detroit as well as Michigan.

While there, I had a opportunity to discuss bike parking at Comerica Park with Tigers management. I suggested that next year’s Going, Going Green event have guarded valet parking for bikes, but the discussion shifted to how can we improve bike parking for all of the Tiger home games.

Stay tuned…