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Finding free bicycle parking in Philly can be a pain, as many cyclists already know.
Often riders have to make do with locking their bikes to street signs or parking meters as a legal option, provided they don’t block pedestrians’ right of way, or taking a chance of attaching them illegally on trees or private fences or railings. Billy Penn does not recommend the latter option.
For most cyclists, just like car drivers, the question of “where can I safely park” arises before they leave home, and can often lead them to opt for alternative forms of transportation.
Members of Philly Bike Action (PBA) say the Street Department’s process to permit bicycle racks and corrals might be part of the reason why public bike parking is so sparse around the city.
“As a result of the numerous requirements, we believe that a lot of businesses are viewing this process as just too onerous and just too much work, compared to the potential benefit,” said PBA board member Sam Ressin.
Ressin, along with Alex Cayley and a small team of PBA volunteers, set out to determine just how onerous the permit application process was.
From 2014 to 2024, 941 rack applications were submitted, according to city records. Of those, PBA could confirm that 323 were approved by the city, and 337 were built — about 36%. For corrals, seven out of 14 applications were confirmed to be approved by PBA, and 10 were built — around 70%
PBA also saw a decline in the number of racks built each year during the time period, even as the number of applications rose.
The data Philly Bike action received also included applications for Indego bikeshare racks. The city-run Indego program has installed nearly 250 stations with more than 2,000 bikes since its introduction in 2015. Ressin said the group chose to remove those numbers from its bike parking count, for one obvious reason.
“The Indego system has had a lot of growth and we’re really excited to see it grow and for more residents to have that option,” he said. “Of course, the one limitation with Indego is that you can’t use your own bike.”
The data PBA received was incomplete, with some applications missing the approval or disapproval decisions. But Ressin said the results show that far too few racks and corrals are approved and built.
“We think that those numbers are very disappointing and should encourage the city to consider how we can make the process better and how we can encourage more bike parking,” Ressin said.
The difficulty parsing out the data provided also highlights one of PBA’s asks of the city, that is for the Streets Department to publish the data on applications and approvals online.
“We think that that’s going to help the public understand if this process is working and it’s going to help the city too,” Ressin said.
How the approval process works
The group wants the Streets Department to streamline the permitting process, create a team to manage it, and publish data on how many applications it receives and approves each year.
Philadelphia requires permits before bicycle racks can be built on sidewalks if they’re being installed in “the public right of way.” The same goes for corrals, which hold at least eight bikes and take up a street parking space per corral. Both must meet a long list of specifications and guidelines.
“When I first read the application I was very overwhelmed by all the requirements,” Ressin said of the corral application. “It’s really like if you want to pursue this, it’s really like another part-time job you have to do.”
The city requires racks to leave at least six feet of clear sidewalk space for foot or wheelchair traffic when a bike is on it, which makes most nine-foot or less sidewalks unsuitable for bike parking. To add a corral, the applicant must own the adjacent property, and the corral and bikes may not extend into the street or sidewalk. Corral applications have a $125 fee.
Will Fraser, Trails and Watershed Project Manager at the Clean Air Council, praised the right-of-way spacing rules. They do a good job of “making sure there’s appropriate space for emergency crews to get through and being able to ensure that pedestrians are able to move freely and aren’t encumbered by something that they’re going to run into,” he said.
Adding bike racks can be a costly process
To get either permit, applicants have to provide a measured site plan, a scale design document usually drawn up and signed by a state-licensed design professional. While neither permit has to be prepared by a licensed engineer or architect, rack applications that aren’t are subject to an extra 90-day review and site inspection.
“All in all, it could be anywhere between $500 and $1,000, between the rendering and the cost of a bike rack. So that’s that’s a lot that’s a lot, even if you’re just purchasing a one bike rack,” Fraser said.
Fraser worked previously on a grant-funded project that helped Philly business owners and residents through the bike rack permitting process. He said the biggest hurdle is the site plan requirement.
“For a small business, that’s potentially a considerable fee,” Fraser said, especially given that there’s no guarantee the permit will be approved.
Once approved, applicants are on the hook for buying and installing the racks and corrals.
The permitting process can be arduous, said Matt Cahn, who began trying to install a bike corral in front of his restaurant Middle Child Clubhouse back in November 2020.
Cahn said he wanted to make the business “a physical hub for Fishtown and to give guests a clearer view of our entrance, which was often blocked by long-parked cars.”
With help from the Clean Air Council and the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, Cahn got all the required plans, petition signatures from neighbors and a required letter from his district councilmember and submitted them to the city by January 2021.
“After that, communication was confusing and sporadic,” Cahn said. “Approvals eventually came through, but only after repeated follow-ups. Staff turnover caused things to fall through the cracks, and there were consistent communication gaps between the different city departments involved in the process. COVID definitely compounded those challenges — especially for a project that wasn’t considered essential.”
Middle Child Clubhouse did eventually get its corral, in July 2025.
“If it takes you almost five years of being very persistent, I can’t imagine how long it would take if you don’t have as much time to devote to this,” Ressin said.
Lessons from Charm City
Biking advocates point to New York City and Baltimore as examples of cities with programs that are less burdensome and cost-prohibitive, which encourages creation of more public bike parking.
Baltimore had been offering free bike racks for a while, but its application process was inefficient and plagued by long wait times.
In June 2016, Bikemore, Baltimore’s cycling advocacy organization, created an online application for residents and business owners to request public right of way racks. Bikemore would share those requests quarterly with the city’s Department of Transportation to install the racks, provided there was no opposition from adjacent property owners — who could provide permission through Bikemore’s application.
The group’s application eventually served as the model for Baltimore to create its own in-house request form in January 2019.
“As advocates, that’s what we’ve tried to do for many, many different things in the city,” said Jed Weeks, Bikemore’s executive director. “It’s just to try to do a demonstration that shows this thing can work, that it’s not the end of the world, and then try to convince the city to adopt that best practice.”
There’s no application fee, and the city handles the installation for free. Turnaround for racks is generally a month, Weeks said.
For applicants in Philadelphia, the cost of getting a bike rack shipped can be more expensive than the purchase cost, Fraser said. The Clean Air Council tried to make it more affordable by bulk-buying for multiple applicants.
In Baltimore, businesses that want to install the racks themselves can apply through a minor privilege permit, which has no fee and only requires a simple site plan rather than a professional design.
Overall, the self-submission process in Baltimore does have some drawbacks. Weeks said that putting the onus on the businesses that request racks leads to the city itself not proactively going out and installing racks where they are truly needed.
“If it’s only businesses submitting, and only businesses that sort of have the time and privilege to submit, they tend to be in the wealthier neighborhoods, the whiter neighborhoods,” Weeks explained. “So you can start to see sort of a deployment distribution of those racks maybe where they are needed, but maybe it’s not the most urgent, from an equity perspective.”
Another issue is that the city sometimes runs out of bike racks, creating a six-month wait at times. But high demand for free bike racks is a relatively good problem to have.
On top of the online application and free installation, Baltimore has a publicly accessible map of the bike and scooter corral parking that has been installed over the past few years.
‘Currently reviewing the permitting process’
PBA presented its findings to the Streets Department this week and Ressin said that further talks are planned.
“The Streets Department expressed interest in working together to identify why only a third of bicycle rack applications have been built,” he said. “They did not make a similar commitment to examining the permitting process for bicycle corrals, but we are hopeful that further engagement with them will result in an easy, simple and streamlined permitting process for bicycle racks and corrals.”
PBA has also requested rack and corral application information for 2025, to add to the data they already have collected and sorted.
In response to Billy Penn’s questions about the bike rack permitting process, the Streets Department emailed a statement saying it is “currently reviewing the permitting process for bike racks and bike corrals. We recognize the need to increase bicycle parking and balance the needs of our users. We plan to work with partners and stakeholders to streamline the process and welcome input from everyone.”
City Council has an upcoming resolution that will add new bike racks to the list of things being installed around the city as part of Mayor Cherelle Parker’s “Ring It On!” initiative to commemorate the nation’s 250th birthday.
Studies have shown that having more cyclists and pedestrians traveling on city streets leads to increased safety for cyclists and pedestrians, through safety in numbers. With more parking available, that “where can I safely park” question becomes less worrisome.
“If you’re creating more parking for bicycles, then you can create more demand for actually using them and that increases the idea of safety in numbers, having more cyclists. More people are using that mode of transportation and that can make it safer potentially,” said Alex Quistberg, associate research professor and deputy chair of the Environmental and Occupational Health Department at Drexel University.
For Ressin and others, the greater availability of parking encourages people to bike more, improves their health and fitness, decreases car congestion and pollution.
“It makes sense to continue increasing, replacing, maintaining bike parking inside of Philadelphia, to encourage as many folks as you can to be able to make that decision to not take the car, travel sustainably, and get some good exercise in there while you’re at it,” Fraser said.
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