# bike parking in office buildings



## Christine (Jul 23, 2005)

Starting next month (8 days from now), the bike parking in the office garage will be handled by the garage management (a private company) rather than our building's Facilities dep't.

Nothing will change except the price. What used to be free, is now $75/month :mad2: 

I emailed the senior VP of our health and wellness dep't (since we're in the health industry and all) imploring him to offer some incentive to cyclists. He said he'd look into it (which doesn't necessarily mean anything good will come of it.)

I was looking at this link and am wondering who else to contact, if not this guy. All the law seems to say is that a building must provide parking, but not necessarily FREE parking (I'm using the "health" aspect as leverage.)

Who would be submitting requests as the "tenant"? I thought facilities, maybe operations? I don't know anything about office building management.


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## Gregory Taylor (Mar 29, 2002)

It would be whichever department deals with the lease, etc. You also might try HR. Or, if you are brave, raise it to the CEO, especially if you have one of those "town hall" group hug kind of meetings that they use to increase employee "engagement", which is the current management buzzword d'jour.

(FYI, I'm in management here at work)

Actually, looking at the stuff at the link, the way it is supposed to work is that your employer makes an application to the landlord for permission to use part of the leased space (i.e. your office) to store bikes. I'd presume that the garage is separately leased by the operator of the garage, so they can charge whatever they want. 

If management doesn't want to give over some space to store bikes, you may want to pitch to your HR folks the prospect of having your company pick up the $75/month fee as an employee benefit. Some companies offer a transit subsidy - pitch this as yet another type of transit subsidy. Or, if your employer offers flexible spending accounts for medical stuff, use that money to pay for the parking. Or just eat the cost - I imagine that it is cheaper than the subway or parking a car.


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## bikerjulio (Jan 19, 2010)

Unless you are in Manhattan, I would have pitched a complete car parking spot at $75. Since at least 20 bikes will fit in a car spot, then $4 per bike would seem to be more in line.


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## chudak (Jul 28, 2012)

bikerjulio said:


> Unless you are in Manhattan, I would have pitched a complete car parking spot at $75. Since at least 20 bikes will fit in a car spot, then $4 per bike would seem to be more in line.


Yeah, $75 seems unreasonably steep for a bicycle.


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## nsfbr (May 23, 2014)

I park my bike in my office, although that may be a luxury not everyone can claim.


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## nate (Jun 20, 2004)

It seems like a clear attempt to eliminate bicycles in the garage so they can charge for another couple cars instead. You should definitely raise a ruckus with your company. If the building management didn't write something into the lease with the parking management company about keeping the bike parking free, they're idiots. It will cost them in the long run even if they make more money in the short run.

Our building is LEED certified so they get points for secure bike parking plus showers for the cyclists. I work in a large metropolitan area and it's the price the building management has to pay to be competitive and charge high rents for building tenants. A car parking pass for the month is about $125 dollars in my building while bikes are free.


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## Peter P. (Dec 30, 2006)

Can you buy a parking spot and sublease the spot to the other cyclists using the garage so you all share the cost?


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## Marc (Jan 23, 2005)

chudak said:


> Yeah, $75 seems unreasonably steep for a bicycle.


It does seem steep...OTOH it depends on:

A) Where you are

and
2) What kind of facility/security your bike gets.

One garage around here has full-size bicycle lockers to secure bikes in with security cams watching it. I can almost envision something like $75/month for that kind of security-rather than just a basic bike rack--considering here in Nebraska parking a car 9AM-5PM 5 days a weeks costs around $200/month. And Nebraska is cheap. I never use it as my work lets me take my bike inside no problem.


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## pmf (Feb 23, 2004)

$200/month to park a car in Nebraska!!!??? You can get parking in downtown DC for around that much. That's crazy. 

Can you bring your bike into your office and park it there? That's verboten where I work, but some folks can do it. I'd be really pissed if they tried to charge anything to park a bike. Bike commuting should be encouraged. Healthier employees, lower insurance costs, higher productivity rates. Try explaining that to your boss.


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## Christine (Jul 23, 2005)

They're going to charge $125/month for non-employees to park a bike down there. Guess the employee rate is considered some sort of perk, but it's way out of proportion. They have a few bike racks in the corner where they keep snow machines or something- can't even cram cars in there. 

The transit subsidy sounds like a good angle- so nutty that cyclists have to jump through hoops to do the right thing. No encouragement whatsoever. 

I still have to deal with the jerk who harasses me on the early morning (last off-peak) train every single time he sees me with the bike, whether I'm in "his" spot or not. Always a joy.  This is the corporate equivalent.


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## tednugent (Apr 26, 2010)

Check with stuff like transit chek to see if benefits apply to bicycle parking


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## duriel (Oct 10, 2013)

Park it at your desk.


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## Christine (Jul 23, 2005)

_your employer makes an application to the landlord for permission _

I'm wondering who the players are. My "employer" would be whom? My direct supervisor first, who would simply have to be okay with a bike in my cube I suppose, but then....? Who's the building manager? Facilities wasn't much of a help, though they did try.

It also says that a bike in the office would have to work around the hours that the freight elevator is in operation. Hmph. One hurdle after another. Can't even carry it up and down the stairs- what if there's a fire during the two or three minutes the bike is carried up or down the stairwell? :mad2:


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## Gregory Taylor (Mar 29, 2002)

Christine said:


> _your employer makes an application to the landlord for permission _
> 
> I'm wondering who the players are. My "employer" would be whom? My direct supervisor first, who would simply have to be okay with a bike in my cube I suppose, but then....? Who's the building manager? Facilities wasn't much of a help, though they did try.
> 
> It also says that a bike in the office would have to work around the hours that the freight elevator is in operation. Hmph. One hurdle after another. Can't even carry it up and down the stairs- what if there's a fire during the two or three minutes the bike is carried up or down the stairwell? :mad2:


Taking a step back, it looks like this New York law is designed to override restrictions placed by landlords on the ability of tenants in office buildings to park bikes in their space. They throw the landlords a bone by allowing them to apply to be exempted from this law if certain conditions exist, and they allow landlords to require that bikes will be transported by the freight elevator only. (Stairs might pose a safety hazard - not so much fire as tripping and falling, I imagine)

So, a couple of things have to happen. The threshold event is that your employer has to decide that they want to allow their employees to park bikes in their leased space. Not all employers will want that. Some will conclude that they don't want to do this (i.e. no space, don't want to torque off the landlord, etc.) for various reasons. If your employer (i.e. senior management) doesn't want to park bikes in their space, it won't happen. Nothing that an employee can do about it except, well, complain to management.

Your "employer" is the company that you work for. Ultimately, you need to find the person in your organization who has the authority to make decisions regarding the leased space and to speak to the landlord on behalf of your company. My guess is that, again, this will be fairly senior management, not a first-line or mid-level manager. Who that is will vary from company to company.


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## Christine (Jul 23, 2005)

This is the largest privately-owned building in NYC. Space shouldn't be an issue. Plenty of empty cubes; I could even park it in my own cube.

I suspect it's easier to apply for the exemption than to deal with a lone pesky cyclist. I might have to print out the information and tape it up over the bike rack. Maybe one other person will be motivated to say something 

So ironic that the biggest obstacle to overcome is my own company, and it's supposedly health-oriented.


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## Gregory Taylor (Mar 29, 2002)

Well I wouldn't give up quite yet. Does your company have an Ombudsman? If you can't get satisfaction after exhausting your options with the usual source for employee benefits (HR, etc.), then see what they can do. Sometimes an Ombudsman can broker a deal. Or, are you represented by a union? If so, talk to the union steward.


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## CliffordK (Jun 6, 2014)

One thing I've always done is carried my bicycle whenever I've brought it into an office building. Thus I never leave any tracks, except perhaps where I finally set it down. I don't think I've tried an elevator though.

I'm surprised that bike parking is so expensive, although I'm not seeing people list bikes compared to auto parking. 

If 10 bikes can squeeze into one car parking lot, then bikes should cost around 1/10 of the cost of cars. Although, apparently the bikes are being squeezed into places that one couldn't otherwise park a car.


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## Christine (Jul 23, 2005)

Not in a union, emailed the health/wellness guy a link to the DOT bike info. He should have a vested interest in making this happen, but the new mayor is infamously anti-bike, it seems.


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## kjdhawkhill (Jan 29, 2011)

Christine said:


> Not in a union, emailed the health/wellness guy a link to the DOT bike info. He should have a vested interest in making this happen, but the new mayor is infamously anti-bike, it seems.


I worked in a pretty "right-leaning" law firm for a while in another city, but made contacts in shipping with both the firm and the building's physical plant which would have permitted me to quietly park a bike in any number of the nearly vacant spaces around the freight elevators… Our health/HR/whatever group actually had some pull on the financial aspect of renting spaces, and I imagine it would have been a worthwhile conversation to talk to them had I desired. 

But I was only 6 miles from home at that point and was also more of a runner at that point, so I often took the train in and ran home.


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## marc7654 (Jun 24, 2014)

Not being a lawyer I may be reading this very wrong. The link you posted appears to indicate that if your employer has asked the building owners for bike parking space then the building has to say yes and then it's up the the employer, not the building, to tell you where you can park within their leased space. "Employers (Tenants or Subtenants) who request bicycle access are responsible for providing appropriate areas within their leased space to store bicycles." Again I may be completely misunderstanding this.


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## CliffordK (Jun 6, 2014)

That doesn't seem to imply that the space must be free. So, if a cubicle costs $1000 a month, and can fit 3 bicycles, then parking a bicycle in a cubicle would cost someone $333 per bike.


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## Christine (Jul 23, 2005)

Yes, I suspect that will be what they tell me- "we must provided spaces, but they don't have to be FREE." I wouldn't mind paying for parking, but not this much. $10/month tops. I'm not parking every day.

Deutche Bank employees who bike have a sweet deal- used to be a corner "office" in a beautiful public atrium with a rug and chandelier. They'd just swipe in and place their bikes on a rack. There were windows with curtains so the riffraff could drool at the bikes who had it better than most people.

Now, that space has been turned into a Starbucks, but they still have a nice locker room with windows next door. Not as charming, but still a sweet deal.


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## John Public (Sep 26, 2014)

The coordination involved might not be worth it but perhaps there is a sympathetic co worker with a bike rack on their car or a truck bed you can stow the bike in.


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## Christine (Jul 23, 2005)

Spoke to one of the security guards yesterday- he said that bikes are not allowed in the building b/c they don't want to risk breaking the glass, and you can't get the bikes through the revolving doors. Silly- why not just use the doors to the side? And how often do bikes break the windows, any more so than, say, a livery cart?

I sent an email to my manager, who said she'll ask the director when he gets back from vacation, but I don't see that having any impact. Either I can speak to the building honcho, or simply petition HR for the cost. 

Meanwhile, no response from the health/wellness dude. :nonod:


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## Rip Van Cycle (Jun 11, 2012)

*It bites all over...*

Sore subject with me, too...

I work in public-sector... in a fairly high-crime city. Locking a bike outside (even my 38 year-old 'beater' bike) isn't an option. We have literally dozens of empty cubicles in our building-- and my bike doesn't take up any more space on the elevator than your garden-type-variety mail-cart. Even if that were the issue, I'm probably now fit enough to carry my bike up to the floor where I work, three stories from the top. But will my employer let me bring my bike in on weekdays?! Noooo...:mad2:

It has always come down to- how much of a fuss do I want to make- and how many bridges do I want to roast pursuing this? Recently, I interviewed for a promotion-- and in light of this, I've kept a low(er) profile concerning my feelings on this. If I'm one of the "bottom half" that doesn't get promoted, though, I'm going to start naming and shaming- perhaps even going public in exposing my employer's retarded policy.


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## rideorglide (Dec 3, 2005)

Christine said:


> They're going to charge $125/month for non-employees to park a bike down there. Guess the employee rate is considered some sort of perk, but it's way out of proportion. They have a few bike racks in the corner where they keep snow machines or something- can't even cram cars in there.
> 
> The transit subsidy sounds like a good angle- so nutty that cyclists have to jump through hoops to do the right thing. No encouragement whatsoever.
> 
> I still have to deal with the jerk who harasses me on the early morning (last off-peak) train every single time he sees me with the bike, whether I'm in "his" spot or not. Always a joy.  This is the corporate equivalent.


I've worked Manhattan, Midtown, Downtown, the Village, LIC, and then some ... but that's just obscene. A lot of folks are just getting by in this world, myself included feeding a family of 4 including two teens, and that $75 put another way, is two Virgin Mobile Phone plans. Whoever they are doing that they should be ashamed of themselves. If they are a healthcare company they should fear for their reputation — which in the years going forward is key to competitiveness in what will be a fiercely contested space. Do they want to come off as hypocrites? They should think about that. The truth will out. Put that in the hands of some good NY journos with a passes for the subject and watch out.

A health-oriented company should be encouraging cycle commuting, no punishing those who would.


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## Christine (Jul 23, 2005)

Rode in this morning, worked 10-6, and wasn't sure how I'd get home. Bike was parked at the outside rack and did fine- nothing stolen. 

BUT getting home was a challenge- I wasn't planning on riding the whole way home, and would've loved to keep the bike there to ride home tomorrow afternoon. I'm a bit leery of riding in the dark with just the headlamp thing on my bars. Couldn't leave my poor bike alone on the outdoor rack in NYC overnight, though. 

So I rode in work clothes about 6 miles into Brooklyn, and got on the G train (after an unsuccessful attempt to get in in one of the stations with those weird revolving doors.) Took that to the 7 at the tail end of rush hour, so I pissed off maybe one or two people, no big deal. Then rode a couple more miles home. Took nearly two hours- riding would've been faster. 

Can't take the railroad home until 8:20 or so, and wasn't willing to wait that long for off-peak hours.

Non-riders have no idea what a PITA it can be. Adventurous, sure, but still a PITA.


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## CliffordK (Jun 6, 2014)

Christine said:


> I'm a bit leery of riding in the dark with just the headlamp thing on my bars.


Time to start considering brighter lights for both the front and rear.




Christine said:


> Couldn't leave my poor bike alone on the outdoor rack in NYC overnight, though.


:crazy:

I think that is pretty much anywhere. What do people do with all the stolen seats?


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## Christine (Jul 23, 2005)

My trusty ol' NiteRider light has finally given up the ghost, though I won't miss the giant brick battery pack. Just have to dust off the newer version that we have someplace and get my sh!t together.

The headlamp wasn't so bad- good for visibility if not much else. Also have a couple of mini blinky light thingys, just used the red one for the backpack.

What happens to the stolen seats? When my seat was stolen back in the day, I went to a bike store and they pulled out a box of used seats so I could purchase one cheap. The seats are sold to bike shops and those are re-sold to the original owners. :mad5:


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