Since his car was totaled a month ago, Jake Fisher has walked to his job in digital marketing in downtown Oklahoma City. It helps that he lives and works in the same neighborhood.
“I like to know I’m not overusing resources,” he said. “If I could walk 20 minutes, versus driving two minutes, I would choose walking.”
Fisher has considered buying a bicycle, but didn’t know where he could park it safely downtown.
Cody Lusnia, another downtown resident, bikes to work and local events whenever he can. He realized many businesses had abundant space for customers’ cars, but not for bikes.
“Where am I going to lock my bike up? I don’t want to lock it up to a street sign or somebody’s fence,” he said.
The two friends are behind the OKC Bike Rack Map, a crowdsourced site that went live on Friday. Visitors can add bike rack locations to the map, which includes local bike trails and covers much of central and northwest Oklahoma City.
Within 12 hours of posting it on Twitter, the map had garnered 90 responses, according to Fisher.
“What that tells me is that there’s an interest in infrastructure for bicycles in the core part of Oklahoma City,” Fisher said. “I feel more secure in knowing where the nearest rack is to my location.”
The site now has more than 100 bike rack locations.
Lusnia and Fisher hope the map will facilitate more biking and less driving.
This mostly dead space here would be an excellent spot for some covered bicycle storage. pic.twitter.com/ICHqCuydcn
— CodyL (@codylusnia) January 8, 2018
“I think in our culture, it has become so common to just drive your car somewhere and then have adjacent parking next to whatever venue you’re going to,” Lusnia said.
“We want to provide people the tools to encourage them to think about alternatives,” he said.
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