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Sunday, May 3, 2026

When car parking becomes bike parking

A couple weeks ago, I was asked on Mastodon (the only social media where I'm active any more) for photos of car parking spaces converted to bike parking corrals. I figured I'd compile them into a blog post, as it's the kind of thing I used to blog about.

Post by @ellie@ellieayla.net
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As it turns out, most of the examples I know of in Ottawa are actually onstreet car parking space conversions, and most of the photos I have of them will be in a large unsorted digital pile of photos. But I have two examples that fit the bill closely, and a bunch of other interesting examples:

Smack dab in the heart of Centretown is this parking spot in the underground parking garage at Massine's Independent Grocer, on Somerset Street at Bank. The entire former parking spot has been painted green, and two wavy ribbon-style bike racks are placed within it.

A well-lit underground parking garage with a parking space painted green between the yellow lines, and on the near side of the line five metal posts separate the former car parking space from the elevator lobby entrance area.

This rack is very well placed. Literally the closest spot to the stairs and elevator. Until I realized these were here, I'd have to carry stuff out of the store to my bike on the sidewalk, or bring my bike into the lobby to transfer my shopping from the cart to my bike trailer, since you can't bring shopping carts outside the building. Now I just bike down the ramp, and take the elevator up.

The same parking spot, viewed slightly to the right where you can see the elevator lobby just on the other side of the concrete pillar at the end of the green bicycle parking space.

Less praiseworthy is the Loblaw's at Rideau and Nelson, where a crappy wheelbender bike rack is loosely placed in the parking area furthest from the store entrance. This photo is over 20 years old, but I don't recall the bike parking situation at this location being much better the last time I visited. If I had to go there by bike these days, I'd probably just lock my bike to the shopping cart corral near the store entrance, or just use the outdoor ribbon bike rack.

A large, well-lit semi-underground parking garage, with some empty parking spots in the foreground separated from the entrance aisle by a chain tha thas a sign that reads 'Reserved parking'. In one of these spots is a metal bike rack with two bikes attached. A shopping cart with my bike pannier is opposite a railing from the bike rack. In the distance, past the white concrete pillars with red bands, is the green wall of the underground entrance to the store.

This next one technically fits the bill of being at a "shopping plaza", albeit an urban one, at 950 Gladstone Avenue at the corner of Loretta, one block west of the O-Train line on the south side. In this Google Street View screenshot dated May 2014, you can see a series of parking spaces in front of the various entrances to the building:

Google Street view screenshot of a blurry view of a building surrounded by a 50cm high concrete apron, from which extend yellow stripes of parking spaces. A wide set and a narrow set of concrete steps with tubular railings connects the top of the apron to the pavement.

By this October 2022 Street View, the concrete apron at the base of the building had been replaced with much nicer looking landscaping with plants, stone retaining walls, and railings. Between two sets of stairs is a four-ring bike rack embedded in concrete within the repaved parking lot. Unfortunately, it's right at the end of two parking spaces so if there are cars parked there, you would have a hard time getting your bike to fit.

Street View image as described above.

When the Street View car went by in October 2024, this error had been corrected, and the entire space between the bike rack and the parking aisle has been painted green with a white bicycle stencil. The bike rack has even multiplied!

Street view image as described above. A second four-ring bike rack is on the near side of the original one, and a two-ring rack on the far side.

Before I get to some onstreet parking spaces, I want to give an honourable mention to the City of Ottawa's reconstruction of Loretta Avenue North, the block to the north of the above building. In this August 2017 Google Street View, you can see a number of parking spaces butted up close to the building sticking out toward the road, which has no sidewalks.

In additon to the description above, there is an unmarked white utility van with a yellow ladder on its roof parked in front of the white concrete-block building at number 131. The street name, Loretta Ave N, is superimposed on the image going away from the camera, and a person is walking towards the camera on the opposite side of the street (which also has no sidewalk)

After a year or two of construction, in October 2024 the Google Street View shows a complete transformation. The perpendicular "private" car parking that was mostly on the public right-of-way has been replaced by a sidewalk and grassy boulevard. The grassy pad is broken up with a concrete pad containing a peculiar but practical bike rack.

In addition to the description above, there is a full sidewalk on the left side, fresh asphalt, trees in the boulevard, and the white concrete-block building has a graffiti mural over much of its frontage.

One last honourable mention is this bike parking shelter in a City of Ottawa parking lot on Laurier Avenue, seen in August 2004. The shelter was not well used and was eventually removed as part of the construction of the north entrance plaza to 150 Elgin.

Seen from an oblique angle up the block and across the four-lane street, the glass shelter has an arched roof with red pillars, and is surrounded by wide, dark-green, concrete-filled bollards. A backlit raised sign advertises municipal parking in English and French at a rate of 50 cents per 12 minutes. Two newspaper boxes, one red, one yellow, are in front of the shelter along the sidewalk, as is a Bell telephone booth. A For Lease sign is posted on the side of an adjacent beige wall.

Okay, now to the fun stuff:

In 2014, the City of Ottawa started installing these car-shaped bicycle racks in some onstreet parking spaces in some commercial districts. They give a pretty clear message: You can fit a lot of bikes in the amount of space occupied by a single car parking spot.

Urban mainstreet with three shops (the first one a cupcake shop with papered over windows), The Hintonburg Public House, and Bridgehead, and a large church. Bolted to the ground in the parking lane is an orange powder-coated tubular metal car-sized sculpture shaped like the outline of a car with bicycle-length prongs sticking out from the curb side of the outline. Two orange and black traffic barrels sit at either end of the car silhouette. Three bikes are parked on the orange car-bike rack, two more on black post-and-ring bike racks on the sidewalk, and a third bike on a blue advertising-style bike rack in the background, also on the sidewalk. A white sharrow (painted bicycle symbol with two chevrons) is painted in the middle lane next to the car-shaped bicycle rack.

The rack was joined by two upright bicycle-shaped structures, presumably to delineate and protect the bike parking area from encroaching cars. Of the few photos I have at this location in Hintonburg, I've never seen more bikes on the orange thing than on the sidewalk racks (but there are photos of it being well used)

Urban mainstreet with two shops, The Hintonburg Public House, and Bridgehead, and a large church. Bolted to the ground in the parking lane is an orange powder-coated tubular metal car-sized sculpture shaped like the outline of a car with bicycle-length prongs sticking out from the curb side of the outline. A bicycle is leaning against one of the prongs. On either end of the former parking space is a thin orange outline of a bicycle perpendicular to the car outline.

This Google Street View of the same location in October 2024 shows a semi-enclosed patio in the parking lane, which, given how few bikes are in the rack in the above photos, is probably a better use of the space.

Google Street view of the same scene with a wooden patio with a wooden board railing height enclosure with yellow metal patio furniture

This rack of the same colour and design a few blocks further west on Wellington Street West has more racks on it. The racks (oh, no sorry, the ~locations~ of the racks) were criticized by nearby business owners for occupying car parking spaces, and were ultimately removed earlier than originally planned in the first year (but they returned the following year, as seen in the 2015 photo above).

Orange car-shaped bicycle rack in a parking lane next to a wide sidewalk on a mainstreet in front of the Wellington Gastropub at the intersection of Clarendon, looking west.

A couple similar racks appeared on Bank Street in Centretown, including this one at MacLaren outside the former Quizno's.

Maroon coloured car-shaped bike rack of the same type as the orange one described above, with about a dozen bikes locked to its prongs, in an onstreet angle parking area near an intersection on the side road off a main street.

If this situation looks strange, this angle of the same location in 2011 shows why: it's angled parking, but the City removed parking lane markings when it switched to Pay & Display in 2010. The idea was that without defined parallel parking spaces in parking lanes, you could potentially fit more cars in the same amount of parking space, and you'd save money not having to send crews out once or twice a year to repaint the lines. But for angled parking, not only can you not fit in more cars, but you need at least some lines so people know what angle to park at.


By 2022, the idea had been retained but with a simpler design of bike rack, without the car outline. I'm not sure why.

View of the bike rack from across the sidewalk with the sign for the adjacent shop, the Great Canadian Poutinerie, in the foreground. A wooden bench is on the sidewalk. Across the street is Fosters Sports Centre and a mural.

This little stub block of Waverley Street at Elgin Street was underused, mainly for car parking as seen in this photo from before Boushey's closed. I remember one of the neighbourhood cops telling me he liked to park his cruiser outside Pure Gelato to use their wifi. It was leftover from the introduction of Jack Purcell Park.

A wide section between two buildings with a roadway leading to an intersection. Off the roadway is about seven stall car parking spaces, separated from a sidewalk by a line of youngish trees. At the end of the short block of roadway is an intersection with old buildings beyond. A bank of three telephone booths is also visible.

The car-oriented space was replaced with a flexible space that in the summer is used for a farmer's market and general nice outdoor space, including these six post-and-ring bike racks.

Paved plaza with paver shapes outlining the former road space, fully covered with metal-and-wood picnic tables and a couple of white event tents.

In Toronto, many of the bike share stations are on the street. I saw this large station of black-and-orange Tangerine bixi-style bikes are on Beverley Street in 2023:

View down a long row of bike share bikes in the asphalt next to a sidewalk, with flex post delineators and a bike lane between the bike station and the general traffic lanes.

This Google Street View photo from September 2015 shows the same location with a line of parked cars:

Google Street View showing a two-way-street off to the right with parked cars in the oncoming curb lane, and a wide solid white line delineating a bike lane between the parked cars and the travel lane. Two post-and-ring bike racks are on a fresh section of sidewalk, with three bikes attached to them. A row of red brick turn-of-the-century houses lines the street, one of which has the Greek letters of the Pi Beta Phi fraternity.

This photo in Montreal, previously seen in this post from my series on findings from a trip to Toronto in 2010, shows a Bixi bike station on one side of the street and a bike parking station on the other side.

Rainy street scene in Montreal with a greige Bixi bike station on the left side of a street and a two-car-stall sized area on the right side with two bike racks, delineated with yellow road paint and green bollards.
Curiously, when I checked in on this location (Duluth and Saint-Urbain) in Google Street View, this July 2022 photo showed both bike parking facilities removed, the Bixi station replaced with a contra-flow bike lane, and the black bike racks replaced with a series of binder-ring style racks:

Google Street View looking down a narrow urban street toward an intersection with a contra-flow bike lane on the left and a series of stainless steel rings (bike racks) on the right side with white markings delineating the equivalent car parallel parking spaces.

So there you have it. Maybe not exactly what was asked for, but it got me into posting on my blog again. I've got another thing I want to post about soon that I hope I'll have time to do justice to. (I will eventually return to the Wellington blog series. I have a lot more research materials to review and compile before I can get to the next stages, and that work isn't much of a priority for me right now.)
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