Bogotá's Bicycle Parking Paradox

  

A bicycle (mine) rests on the grass beside the Centro Memoria's car parking lot. 

Bogotá's has laws and policies requiring bicycle parking, in order to promote sustainable transit. But when the new Centro Memoria, a human rights documentation center, opened recently, it included two car parking lots and none for bicycles.

But right across the street  the small and relatively new Parque del Renacimiento has a half dozen bike racks with capacity for perhaps 100 bicycles - but rarely contain more than one or two bikes.

It fits a pattern of incontistancy in Bogotá's parking, which suggests several things to me: That bicycle parking isn't designed by cyclists, and that corruption might be involved. Are huge bike racks built more to give someone's uncle a contract than to actually service cyclists?

The new Centro Memoria also has an underground parking lot for cars, but no parking for bicycles.

Across the street in the Parque del Renacimiento, multiple bike parking racks sit empty.

A lonely bicycle in the Parque del Renacimiento racks.

In contrast, the city recently installed several simple and practical bike parking racks in the Parque Nacional. 

Newly-installed bike parking in El Parque Nacional in Bogotá.

The city also installed practical bike racks in the still-unopened Museo Nacional TransMilenio station. It's the only TM station I've seen with this sort of small, practical bike parking.

Several TransMilenio stations have these big, expensive bike parking structures (this one sat empty for years after completion until demonstrators staged a protest in front of it). They're nice, but 90% of stations have no bike parking at all - even tho Mayor Enrique Peñalosa, who designed the system, is a cyclist.

Build it and bikes will come: A few years ago some of us lobbied the Central Cemetery to install bike racks. They did, and today the racks get used, at least on Sundays, when La Ciclovia goes by on neighboring 26th St.

On the other hand, Ave. Septima, which is closed to car traffic during the days, has no bicycle parking. Here, someone chained their bike to a tree.