Parking “Corrals”

Motor scooters have long been a practical (and precarious) mode of transportation about Rome’s busy streets. With motorcycle and scooter sales dramatically up in the U.S., cities like Columbus, Ohio are starting to make special parking accommodations for them.

Columbus, Ohio is designating areas around the city to accommodate two-wheeler motorized vehicle parking, aka “corrals.”

With the soaring price of gas, it comes as no surprise that motorcycle and scooter sales are up sharply in states all over the country. The Motorcycle Industry Council says scooter sales jumped 24 percent nationwide in the first quarter 2008.

In Florida, to site just one example, motorcycle sales totaled one hundred thousand last year. Half way through 2008, that total is 82,000. One Florida dealer reported its scooter and smaller engine motorcycle sales up over 250 percent this year.

Landscape architects, as urban design partners and specifiers of bike racks for two-wheeled pedalers, will need to start paying more attention to parking needs of the two-wheeler motorized set.

Columbus, Ohio Mayor Michael Coleman, for instance, just announced his city’s Motorized Two-Wheel Vehicle Parking plan. The plan provides better parking options for motorcycles, mopeds and motor scooters in the Short North, downtown and Brewery District. A first location parking location opened July 16.

The Columbus parking plan has two phases: For the first year, parking in the 15 “corrals” will be free, but then corral fees will kick in to pay for parking upkeep.

The current Columbus code, like most cities, allows motorcycles, scooters and mopeds to park anywhere cars and trucks can park, but the plan aims to make two-wheel parking more space-appropriate and easily accessible.

Columbus hasn’t forgotten the bicyclists either, adding 40 racks along North High Street, installed 61 more bicycle racks downtown in July (space for 136 bikes) and plans to increase the number of bike racks every month. The city also will build 100 miles of bikeways throughout the city over the next couple years.

Mayor Coleman told the local media: “What we’re seeing is a transition to more efficient vehicles, whether they be bicycles, foot power, whether they be scooters or mopeds, whether they be light rail or street cars, that’s the wave of the future in America and the wave of the future in Columbus,”

Concomitant to all the new motorized two-wheelers on the roads, is the predictable upswing in accidents, but that’s a topic for another day.

For more info on the Columbus parking plan go to 0711MotoParkingFinalReport.pdf