Bike-friendly business guru April Economides demonstrates the Hammer Museum’s excellent temporary bicycle stairways at Bike Night at the Hammer 2012
When I visited and biked around Toronto in 2000, I explored the Don River bike paths and greenway. I was happy to discover that public stairways in Toronto have a little ramp along the edge of nearly every public stairway – so it was really easy to roll my bicycle up and down the stairs. Some of the Toronto bike stairway ramps had a small groove down the middle, some were flat.
I was reminded of these last week when the Hammer Museum had temporary bike stairways installed for their annual Bike Night at the Hammer event. The Hammer’s temporary ramps were excellent – very useful, and an excellent complement to the sea of bicycle parking in the Hammer courtyard. Wooot! Wooooooot!
According to Wikipedia, these are called “Bicycle Stairways“ or “Wheeling Ramps” or “Push Ramps.” Here’s a wikimedia photo of a fairly advanced version (with four wheel grooves) from a bike parking facility in the Netherlands:
Bike stairway, or fietsenstalling, in the Netherlands. Looks like four cyclists at once can use these stairs. From Wikimedia, photo by Ninostar
Bike stairs are actually approved in the city of Los Angeles’ Bicycle Plan (see Section 9 page 129 here.) Despite bike plan approval in March 2011, public stairs at Metro Expo Line Stations, parks, etc., continue to open in L.A. with no provision for easy rolling of bicycle wheels.
Screen shot of top of bike stairs page (Section 9, page 129) in L.A. City’s approved Bike Plan Technical Design Handbook – click on image to go to actual document
Los Angeles City Councilmembers Tom LaBonge and Eric Garcetti introduced a motion (council file 10-1449: Bicycle Stairs on Outdoor City Stairways) to get a Transportation Department (LADOT) “report on the feasibility of implementing bicycle stairs” in L.A., but the motion hasn’t gone anywhere… yet.
Is anyone out there aware of where these have been done anywhere in Los Angeles or nearby? The city bike plan states that they’re in Los Angeles (plus Denver, Chicago, San Francisco) but I don’t remember spotting any here.
Where would you like to see them? Is there a public stairway in L.A. where it would make a lot of sense to pilot some bike stairs? I tend to think that a high-bike-boardings Metro Station might make most sense. Maybe the Metro Expo Line USC station? What do you think?
(Lastly, I’d be remiss to run a picture of my friend April Economides without briefly plugging her work. She’s the woman behind Green Octopus Consulting, working with businesses and Business Improvement Districts to make them environmentally awesome. She created Long Beach’s Bicycle-Friendly Business District program.)
B.I.K.A.S. 
bikinginla
06/12/2012
There are bike stairs on the Entrada Drive underpass below PCH ( http://bit.ly/L2LC3L ); I use them on a semi-regular basis to access the bike path on the beach.
Joe Linton
06/12/2012
Aha!!! That’s where the L.A. ones are… Thanks! Does anyone know the jurisdiction on that underpass – ie: is it city, county, Rec&Parks, beaches, etc? I am curious how they came about.
Evan
06/12/2012
Not sure about that specific example, but the Santa Monica draft Bike Action Plan mentions ramps/wheel troughs as additions to bridges and stairways that provide access to the beach path, within the 5 year implementation phase (see Ch. 3, pgs. 38-39).
In the appendix on bike parking design, it states that stairs are discouraged along the path to any bike parking space, but if they are necessary than ramps/troughs should be incorporated into the design (Appendix F, pg. 3)
http://www01.smgov.net/planning/whats-new/bike%20action%20plan/102611_BAP_web.pdf (WARNING: big PDF)
Jeshii (・∀・) (@jeshizaemon)
06/12/2012
North Hollywood Station for sure.
Dennis Hindman
06/12/2012
As the result of bicycle roundtable meeting suggestions, installing stair channels or ramps for bicycles is one of the ten Metro board of directives that was passed:
Click to access Bikes_Mayors_Board_Motion_September_2010_16_EMAC.pdf
As you can see in the last paragraph at the bottom of this Metro bike planning page, several changes have already been implemented, such as lifting restrictions for bikes on trains at peak hours and removing seats to make more room for bikes:
http://www.metro.net/around/bikes/bikes-metro/
Metro looked into putting triple racks on all their buses, but there is a problem with the current state law regarding this. The bike racks can only stick out a maximum of 36 inches from the front of the body of the bus, but the length of the bus body does not include the bumper and that is where the problem lies for this.
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d15/vc35400.htm
Most of the Orange Line buses have triple bike racks due to the buses running on a exclusive busway.
So, I went down to the North Hollywood terminal for the Orange Line recently and measured how far out from the body of the bus the three different triple bike rack designs used are.
Sure enough, they all of the triple bike racks far exceed the state law of maximum length, after the length of the bus bumper is added in.
Dennis Hindman
06/12/2012
I forgot to mention that at one of the Metro roundtable subcommittee implementation meetings I attended, a Metro engineer explained that they cannot retrofit a stair channel for bikes at most existing train stations due to needing to meet the fire departments minimum requirement for pedestrian capacity at stairways.
Joe Linton
06/12/2012
They said they couldn’t do bike parking, CicLAvia, bike lanes, road diets, green paint… it’s not the end of the conversation – it’s just that pretty much every engineer starts by saying “no” to bike stuff – that’s what they’re trained to do.
gr8way2talk
06/12/2012
The Entrada underpass L-shaped steel channels were put in by L.A. DOT Bicycle Program Coordinator Michelle Mowery. They were placed on only one side on the narrow stairs to reduce trips and falls. The Expo BAC is looking into ways to include bike channels in elevated rail stations. One problem is the narrow width of the stairs, built to absolute minimum sizes and another problem is the steep slope. In the Netherlands, bike stairs often have a 20% slope. In US stairs with 34% slopes, it may be easier to carry your bicycle. The fire department exiting requirements may be met by the width between the handrails. That may leave a few inches on the ground below the handrails available for a channel. I don’t know if we can reduce the slope.
Steven White
06/13/2012
The narrow width of the stairs on elevated Expo Stations is crazy. For example: http://twitter.com/StevenMWhite/status/211231373556596736
There’s a bunch of wasted space next to the stairway… shouldn’t it either be centered with more platform space on each side, or widened with a bike channel or something? This design doesn’t make any sense to me. Does anyone else know why it would be built with such a skinny platform, stairway, and then empty space?
Evan
06/13/2012
Yikes, that platform width next to the column and the stairway is kind of scary. It barely looks wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair.
gr8way2talk
06/12/2012
The Hammer Museum temporary plywood bike ramps were the brainchild of Eric Weinstein. They were a simple L-shaped cove and will probably be re-used for other bike-friendly events at the museum.
Joe Linton
06/13/2012
Kudos Eric W!
Eric W
06/22/2012
Thanks Joe – I’ve been advocating for bike ramps at all the meeting mentioned.
And I’d like to point out that temporary ramps are pretty easy to build. A few DIY examples might convince people that bike ramps on stairs are a good idea.
Todd Boulanger
03/15/2013
Thanks for the interesting and important design discussion…
… though a point of clarification/ correction for your text:
“fietsen” = bicycle
“staling” = parking
“helling” = ramp, or
“hellingsheok” = ramp angle/ inclination
so swap out “stalling” for the correct term “helling”
Todd Boulanger
VP of Operations
Bikestation