Community Corner

Bike Racks Sprout Up Across East Atlanta Patch

The goal is to encourage bike riding in intown Atlanta, reduce pollution and traffic congestion and improve quality of life.

CANDLER PARK — Little by little, the city of the car is becoming more hospitable to bike riders.

And thanks to the efforts of Amy Stout, a Candler Park resident and neighborhood activist, several communities in Northeast Atlanta have bike racks for cyclists' use.

The racks have been or are in the process of being installed at businesses and meeting places in the East Atlanta Patch neighborhoods of Candler Park, Lake Claire, Inman Park, Cabbagetown and Reynoldstown, as well as the Little Five Points district.

An installation also is going in the Poncey-Highland community.

The full list:
Candler Park:

  • First Existentialist Congregation, 470 Candler Park Dr. NE
  • Epworth United Methodist Church, 1561 McLendon Ave. NE
Inman Park:
  • Little 5 Points Community Center, 1083 Austin Ave. NE
  • Savage Pizza, 484 Moreland Ave. NE
  • Savi Urban Market, 910-918 Austin Ave. or 287 Elizabeth St. NE
  • Inman Park United Methodist Church, 1015 Edgewood Ave. NE
Cabbagetown:
  • Sweet Cheats, 692 Kirkwood Ave. SE
Reynoldstown:
  • H. Harper Station, 904 Memorial Dr. SE
  • Home Grown, 968 Memorial Dr. SE
Lake Claire:
  • Lake Claire Community Land Trust, 280 Arizona Ave. NE
  • Kashi Yoga, 1681 McLendon Ave. NE
Poncey-Highland:
  • Plaza Theatre area 1049 Ponce de Leon Ave. NE
  • Manuel's Tavern, 602 North Highland Ave. NE
The funding, which came from the city via a grant awarded to Neighborhood Planning Unit-N, paid for the racks, which were provided by the Cabbagetown-based Atlanta Bicycle Coalition and installed by the the SOPO Bicycle Cooperative out of Grant Park.

NPU-N received $5,700 in two rounds of funding for the project.

"For the past two years, the city of Atlanta has sponsored a grant program for all of the city's NPUs," Stout, who wrote the grant request for the racks, told Patch.

In the first year, NPU-N requested funds for neighborhood logo street sign toppers.

But this year Stout said bike racks seemed more practical, given the growing popularity of bikes in intown Atlanta.

The goal, she said, is to encourage bike riding in intown Atlanta, reduce pollution and traffic congestion and improve quality of life.

Rebecca Serna, the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition's executive director, said such moves complement other bike-friendly efforts being pushed in the city.

That's especially true now that Mayor Kasim Reed said he wants to make Atlanta a Top 10 city in the country for biking.

"Atlanta's neighborhoods are such a key part of making the city so much more bike friendly," Serna said. "This is a great amenity that sends a clear message"  to help strengthen that.

Another bike draw is the Atlanta BeltLine, which teems with cyclists on the weekends.

All of those amenities — from the BeltLine to adding or extending bike travel lanes and adding more bike racks — makes Reed's goal more attainable.

Indeed, Atlanta seeks to create a bike share program — similar to initiatives already found in several world cities, including Paris, New York and Amsterdam.

The program allows users to rent bikes to move around those cities.

In Paris, for example, users of its Vélib' program rent from 23,000 bikes docked in any one of the city's 1,700 docking stations to move about the city.

The Atlanta Bicycle Coalition conducted a feasibility study in May for a bike share program here and the city is currently reviewing proposal-bids to create such a system in Downtown, Midtown and other intown Atlanta neighborhoods.

The program, Serna said, could be operational in 18 months.


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