HUB Cycling Older Building Bike Parking Retrofit Program

Supporting Disadvantaged Vancouver Residents

The City of Vancouver’s Greenest City Program and the Zero Emission Innovation Centre are financially supporting HUB Cycling to conduct needs assessments and develop technical recommendations regarding bike parking retrofits for buildings that provide housing to disadvantaged populations.  

Understanding options and processes for improving bike parking in buildings that didn’t originally require bike parking at current standards is daunting for housing managers and residents. This HUB Cycling & UBC research helped key stakeholders understand the situation. The Older Buildings Bike Parking Retrofit Program is designed to overcome this barrier.  

Public bike routes are quickly improving throughout the region, and evolving municipal bylaws are making bike parking in new buildings much more secure and accessible. But most of the buildings in our urban region that provide housing to disadvantaged populations were constructed when there were low or no requirements for secure, accessible bike parking. For people living in older buildings, the low quality and capacity of bike parking poses a high barrier to regular transportation cycling.  

The following trends are dramatically increasing market demand for residential buildings that have plentiful, well-designed bike parking facilities:

• High housing costs, and the resulting goal of decreasing other costs.
• Government focus on the development of communities with all services nearby.
• Quickly growing interest in e-biking, attracting many more people to cycling.
• Decreasing car ownership and interest in oversize family and cargo bikes.
• Increasing goals for people to lead healthy lives with low environmental impacts.

With City of Vancouver and ZEIC funding support, HUB Cycling is providing the following at no cost for a limited number of residential buildings through our relationship with social housing organisations serving diverse populations:  

1. Review building documentation, inspect current bike parking and potential locations for additional bike parking, and learn about resident bike parking needs through building representatives and a site inspection.
2. Develop draft technical specifications for identified areas for the addition / improvement of bike parking and related security and safety retrofits.
3. Review bike parking retrofit options with building representatives, and revise technical plans for optimal benefit related to resident bike parking needs and goals.
4. Finalize technical plans, and review them with building representatives to prepare a call for equipment installer and other contractor quotes.
5. Provide a specialized guide overviewing relevant building bylaws and potential permitting and other municipal requirements.
6. Review installer and contractor quotes with building representatives to ensure they all provide high quality retrofit solutions that meet HUB Cycling’s technical specifications.
7. Provide a financial subsidy to partially offset permitting and / or equipment installation costs.  

HUB Cycling is happy to have the opportunity to provide this service as a vital component in meeting our mandate to get more people cycling more often. We look forward to continuing this work in coming years in collaboration with the Zero Emission Innovation Centre, the City of Vancouver, and other governmental, charitable, and private sector partners.