Eric Adams bikes to work on second day in office: ‘On the road again!’ (A.K.A The NY Bike thread)
- Thread starter bnew
- Start date
Bike parking startup Oonee debuts designs for two new Brooklyn ‘hubs’ • Brooklyn Paper
Local bike parking startup Oonee has unveiled designs for state-of-the,-art "hubs" in new residential buildings in Brooklyn.
www.brooklynpaper.com
Bike parking startup Oonee debuts designs for two new Brooklyn ‘hubs’
By Ben BrachfeldPosted on June 27, 2022
A rendering of Oonee’s planned “hub” in Sunset Park.
Courtesy of Oonee
Local bike parking startup Oonee has unveiled designs for state-of-the-art “hubs” in new residential buildings in Brooklyn, some of their biggest facilities yet as the company tries to scale up secure bike storage in the Big Apple.
The two planned facilities in Sunset Park and Bedford-Stuyvesant are expected to each have space for dozens of bikes in a secure, free-to-use space open to the public, says company founder Shabazz Stuart, who unveiled the new designs in a Medium post on Monday.
Both hubs will be located near subway stops, and are designed to support multi-modal commutes where people ride their bikes from home to the subway, and can count on it being securely stored until the end of their shift. One-third of spaces in the new hubs will be prioritized for delivery workers, who put more miles on their bikes than just about anyone else in New York.
The Oonee hub will be free to use and accessible to the public.Courtesy of Oonee
The hubs will also make use of newfangled bike parking technology, such as “assisted lift racks” that hydraulically hoist a bike in vertical storage, and “smart racks” that eliminate the need for cyclists to carry locks and allow the company to track in real-time the number of bikes in any facility.
Oonee wants to put hubs in buildings all over Brooklyn using the “community benefits agreement” process negotiated during the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), the byzantine land use process through which all new buildings must go if a rezoning is required. CBAs are often assembled to provide public goods, like a new grocery store or a subway elevator, in order to gain approval for a project from a Community Board.
CBAs present a number of opportunities for the company as it looks to scale up, Stuart told Brooklyn Paper. First, it’s a new mode to finance their projects; because Oonee facilities are free to use, the company has had to get creative financially, including placing ads on the outside of some of its existing “pods.”
But he also hopes that the new hubs will become a model for drastically expanding the scale of bike parking citywide more efficiently than would be possible with its standalone structures alone.
“We’re on a mission that, if you’re going through ULURP, and assembling a CBA, you should really look at secure bike parking,” Stuart said. “It’s really a no-brainer in my opinion.”
Oonee is also designing a hub in Bed Stuy, rendering seen here.Courtesy of Oonee
Stuart expressed disappointment that the model hadn’t been embraced earlier, citing particularly the 1,400-foot One Vanderbilt tower next to Grand Central Terminal which, despite having $250 million in transit upgrades as part of its zoning package, did not feature any public secure bike parking. He feels that many people still see biking as a novelty activity instead of a full-fledged mode of transportation, which keeps policymakers from prioritizing it and “ancillaries” the way they do for car commuters.
“We struggle to think about cycling as a transportation system. If you think about cars, you have to have gas stations. And you can’t have a conversation about land use in New York City without talking about car parking. It’s not possible,” Stuart said. “If we’re really serious about bicycles as a mode of transportation people use, we have to think about bike parking, e-bike charging, where are ppl getting flats fixed? There are all sorts of ancillaries needed to support bike culture.”
“If the City of New York had taken this approach 15 years ago, you’d have many more people on bikes,” he continued. “And Oonee wouldn’t have to exist.”
The Podfather: Shabazz Stuart shows off the first Oonee Pod in Kings County.File photo by Ben Verde
Stuart, a Brooklyn native who used to work at the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, started Oonee (which comes from the Japanese word for sea urchin) in 2017 after having three bikes stolen from him in five years. He has said that made him realize the lack of safe, secure storage for bicycles in New York and other American cities despite such infrastructure being ubiquitous in Europe and Asia.
Thousands of bikes are stolen every year in the city, only a fraction of which are ever recovered by police; on the street, a bike being stolen will not set off an alarm like a car, and one does not need keys or the skill to “hotwire” in order to steal one.
Since then, the company has created a number of different models it hopes to bring to the streets of New York and other cities. The story started with the Oonee Pod, which first launched outside Atlantic Terminal in 2019 with 20 secure parking spots. The company later announced a partnership across the Hudson with Jersey City to create the nation’s first bike parking pod network.
The Oonee Mini on Vanderbilt Avenue.Courtesy of Oonee
More recently, the company unveiled a “Mini” pod outside Grand Central Terminal, and earlier this year launched a pilot with the Department of Transportation to test out Mini pods in locales across Gotham, including a 29-day residency this month on the Vanderbilt Avenue open street.
Oonee on Monday also unveiled its new “Oonee Dock,” a Citi Bike-esque docking station which, when implemented, would remove the need for a bike lock in favor of a “securitized locking arm that is controlled via app or keycard.” It also unveiled a “Lite” version of its pod plus a larger, redesigned version of the original pod.
Envisioning Oonee facilities as public infrastructure rather than instruments for private profit, all of the facilities are free to use, though users must sign up for an account on the company’s app.
Hochul commits $3M to link Rochester bike trail network with an old railroad trestle
The Running Track Bridge a mile north of downtown would connect the El Camino trail and underserved neighborhoods in northeast Rochester to the Genesee Riverway Trail, extending from Charlotte, through downtown, and south to the Erie Canal.
www.wxxinews.org
Hochul commits $3M to link Rochester bike trail network with an old railroad trestle
WXXI News | By Brian SharpPublished June 28, 2022 at 8:43 AM EDT
Max Schulte/ WXXI News
Looking north from the eastern banks of the Genesee River gorge at what remains of Rochester's Running Track Bridge, located a mile north of downtown and envisioned to one day provide a direct link between the El Camino and Genesee Riverway trails.
A mile or so north of downtown Rochester, an abandoned and out-of-the-way railroad trestle soars 100 feet over the Genesee River gorge.
The rusted steel structure crosses the chasm at tree-top level, offering stunning views.
More important to city planners, however – and the reason Gov. Kathy Hochul recently committed $3 million to fix up the bridge – is the connection it can provide.
If restored, the bridge would serve as a direct link between two trails: The El Camino trail, which crosses through the city’s underserved northeast neighborhoods, and the Genesee Riverway Trail, which stretches from Charlotte through downtown and south to the Erie Canal.
“And of course, its location is right over what will ultimately become the new High Falls State Park,” said Erik Frisch, the city’s deputy commissioner of neighborhood and business development.
Turning this rusted relic into what officials say will be a jewel of the trail network is going to take about $15 million.
The bridge dates to 1887, and was built as a part of the Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg Railroad, known as the “Hojack Line,” servicing RG&E’s former Beebee Station. The same line crossed the river again in Charlotte, on a swing bridge that was dismantled in 2012.
Considerable work just went into stabilizing the structure. But the approach on the west bank is missing. And just how the trail connections will be made in what is largely an industrial area of the city is unclear.
Max Schulte / WXXI News
Looking east across what remains of Rochester's Running Track Bridge, an abandoned railroad trestle a mile north of downtown that one day could provide a direct link between the El Camino and Genesee Riverway trails.
That is where the focus turns now -- to design. And finding the rest of the money to make this a reality.
“There's a lot of a lot of work to be done,” Frisch said. “This bridge has kind of sat there now unused for a very long time, exposed to the elements with not a lot of attention.”
The bridge is shorter in length but similar in height to the Pont de Rennes Bridge at High Falls.
Renovations to the Pont de Rennes – a former vehicle crossing long ago converted to a pedestrian bridge – are estimated to be in the same price range as fixing the Running Track Bridge. All are included in a series of riverfront projects intended to both improve access to the water and fill gaps in the trail system.
Max Schulte/WXXI News
Looking up from the eastern bank of Genesee River to the underside of Rochester's Running Track Bridge, an abandoned railroad trestle roughly a mile north of downtown that could one day link the El Camino and Genesee Riverway trails.
Funding for the bridge was included in nearly $24 million in state funds awarded to transportation projects across the Finger Lakes; nearly $180 million statewide. Other notable local projects include:
- $1.2 million to the village of Brockport for sidewalks, crosswalks and other pedestrian and bicyclist safety improvements at the Smith Street Bridge.
- $4 million to the village of Fairport for sidewalks and bicycle and pedestrian projects along Main Street.
- $1.6 million to Ontario County for sidewalks, pedestrian bridge and a pedestrian and bike path along Route 364 from Lakeshore Drive to Marvin Sands Drive.
- $1.5 million to the village of East Rochester for sidewalks, curbs, and crosswalks in the area of the East Rochester schools campus.
- $5 million to the Rochester-Genesee Regional Authority to buy hydrogen fuel cell buses and fueling system to service Western New York.
BK The Great
Veteran
This dude is trash as a mayor. He needs to worry about the shootings that’s happening daily or people getting hurt for no reason.
ExodusNirvana
Change is inevitable...
CACs want bike lanes breh...that'll solve EVERYTHING
Go ahead...go on Twitter and check who wants more bike lanes and to get rid of cars
BK The Great
Veteran
ExodusNirvana
Change is inevitable...
They want ALL cars gone from NYC. That's what they want.
Go ahead...go on Twitter and search for any borough and "bike lanes" or "YIMBY"
It is almost always predominantly young white men pushing for that shyt and if you dig even deeper you'll see they're not pushing for affordable housing, they're pushing for "housing" and that housing will likely be luxury condos and things that the average NYer could never afford. You know who can afford it?
Young white transplants. Tech bros and Real estate bros. LGBTQ folk.
BK The Great
Veteran
That won’t happen that quick. Those people are Dumb ass yuppies who are apart of the problem. I don’t drive anymore and I do bike around but I go my own routes and don’t always follow those lanes.
We need cycle highways to ensure cyclist and pedestrian safety. i know i'll be satisfied when I can enter a destination in google maps and 90% of the route can be taken via protected bike lanes.
Last edited:
BK The Great
Veteran
you see painted lines or protected bike lanes? I assure you bike lanes are not everywhere.
NYC DOT - Bicycle Maps
www1.nyc.gov
BK The Great
Veteran
as it should.
Traffic is crazy not sure if it will help anyway.