In summer 2007, I temporarily moved into Midtown and decided to bring my bike to Atlanta. During the first part of the 2007-2008 school year, I had no trouble finding adequate parking on campus. The bike racks around Klaus, and the multiple racks on 5th Street in Tech Square have been very useful to the campus biking community.
But I foresaw this past summer that even these racks would become overfilled and cyclists would have to resort to benches, lampposts and trees. As such, I recommended to 5th street management that they purchase another rack or two to post outside of the TSRB/Centergy area.
Not only are there many tenants in these buildings who cycle to and from work or to meet with professors and advisors, but Moe’s is always crowded around midday and I’m sure some of its patrons lock their bikes outside.
As these two racks outside Moe’s are always full at midday, I have resorted to parking across the street near Tin Drum—no big pain for me. However, some of us who work in these buildings come by at times for only five minutes to grab something, and if the racks are full, we’ll lock our bikes to the handrails. In these instances, the racks across the street and in the Centergy Parking Deck are useless to us.
I cannot speak for all cyclists, but we cycle to be environmentally friendly and so that we can “park” close to our classes or work. If your bicycle “parking” is normally full, you should request Tech administration to not just “investigate” the situation, but actually put in more bike racks.
Ben Clarke
EE grad student