When employers provide — and pay for — guaranteed parking spots, employees are more likely to drive to work. That’s obvious and the reason Donald Shoup came up with the idea for the parking cash-out law adopted by California (read about it in this excerpt from DRIVE that ran in the Toronto Star). Now Tom Vanderbilt, the author of the excellent Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), makes a strong case that if employers provided better parking for bikes, more people would cycle to work.
In his smart essay on Slate.com about the need for cities to invest in more and better parking for bicycles, Vanderbilt looks at some of the effective steps some cities are taking. Portland, not surprisingly, is a leader among US cities, but others are making intelligent moves. New York City, for example, “passed a bill mandating that commercial parking garages provide spaces for bicycles — one bike space for every 10 cars, up to 200 cars.”
He also points out that commuters would be reluctant to drive to work “if they knew their expensive car was likely to be stolen, vandalized, or taken away by police. And yet this is what was being asked of bicycle commuters, save those lucky few who work in a handful of buildings that provide indoor bicycle parking.”