PD Editorial: Valet parking for bikes? Bring it on

Even people who drive everywhere benefit when more travelers ride bikes, and safe valet bike parking is one more way to encourage them.

Each trip by bike makes the entire transportation system cleaner, quieter, more efficient and less expensive. Yet Sonoma County’s communities earn so-so grades for their efforts to make bicycling safer and more convenient. Santa Rosa and Sonoma won silver ratings on the League of American Bicyclists’ 2023 list of bicycle-friendly cities. Eight other cities in California won gold ratings. Davis led the state with one of the nation’s five platinum ratings.

The gap is wide. Only 1.6% of all trips in Santa Rosa are made by bike, according to a Close to Home column last year by bicycling advocates Adrian Covert and Alexa Forrester. In platinum-plated Davis, they wrote, a quarter of all trips are by bike.

It’s not the weather that impedes biking here in the sunny North Bay but a failure of leadership and investment.

Covert and Forrester made a persuasive case for creating more bike lanes that are physically separated from motor vehicle traffic. The white painted lines that separate most bike lanes in Santa Rosa hardly inhibit a car from crossing over.

Other ways to boost cycling require only imagination and flexibility. A recent forum sponsored by the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition showcased one possibility. The event took a cue from fancy restaurants and provided bicycle valet parking.

Organizers paid the city of Santa Rosa $50 to reserve three parking spaces in front of the forum venue on Fourth Street. That’s how much the city would have received in parking revenue if the spaces had been occupied by cars.

Each of the three spaces had room for about 10 bikes. People who rode to the forum were able to park right out front and go inside without worrying that their bikes would be stolen or vandalized. Just last week Santa Rosa police found more than $15,000 worth of stolen bicycles during a traffic stop.

Valet parking for bikes is not a new idea. The Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition offers the service for any type of event. It makes efficient use of parking spaces and ensures that bicycles are parked in an orderly fashion. The hope is that more people will pedal to an event instead of driving if they know their bike will be secure.

What made the valet parking at the recent event novel was that it took place in public parking spaces on a city street. Usually it’s in a private parking lot.

Santa Rosa and other municipalities should encourage this public use by discounting or waiving compensatory fees such as the $50 paid by the bicycle coalition. Converting a few parking spaces, on the street or in a garage, into bicycle corrals could help, too. If more people ride, there are plenty of benefits whose value goes beyond cash. And contrary to popular belief, the city has a surplus of parking.

As with the pandemic-era practice of allowing restaurants to seat diners in city parking spaces, valet bike parking serves public and private interests alike. It’s a simple formula: More bikes mean fewer cars, and that adds up to a more livable community.

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