by J. Brooks Terry
Staff Writer
Thanks to a recently awarded $48,000 Federal grant, much of downtown is getting new bicycle racks. Resembling historic street lamps, each of the 149 racks holds two
bikes.
“We think this is a really nice program and one that will encourage more activities like this downtown,” said Marci Larson, a representative from the Metropolitan Planning Organization. “We’re hoping to have at least some of them in place before the Super Bowl.”
Larson said the MPO helped secure the necessary dollars to purchase the racks and that the City is installing them.
City Council member Suzanne Jenkins said that, as downtown grows, sharing its roads will have to be accepted.
“Absolutely,” she said. “We need to give equal access to bicycles because we’ve gone ahead with plans to install bike lanes. It’s only a matter of time before people get off those bikes. They have to park them somewhere.”