Valet Bike Parking

Valet Bike Parking is a great service to the community and advertising tool for community bike shops and advocacy organizations.

What is it?

Simply put, when attending an event instead of leaving your bike chaining up a post, you leave it with someone who is going to keep an eye on it. This not only ensures the safety of their bike, but it creates a centralized gathering point (aka social spot) for all the cyclists attending the event -- this encourages people to ride. The event itself benefits because to the decreased demand for car parking and the organization running the valet bike parking has great exposure to the local cycling population.

Liability

Chances are the people that would take the time to sue over a small scratch are not apt to use your service in the first place. Regardless, you should have insurance, and if the event has really high end bikes showing up, a waiver form never hurts.

Setting Up

Again, this is an opportunity to advertise what you do so make it look professional, safe, and informative.

Rope it off

With enough volunteers watching the bikes you don't really need a border. HOWEVER, it gives people piece of mind to see that their bike is in a protected area with borders. Use caution tape, or to be more environmentally friendly use a re-usable brightly colored nylon rope.

Keeping track of bikes

Raffle Tickets

Raffle tickets are a cheap and easy way to do it. Buy a roll of 2,000 from Office Depot for under $8.

Instructions

1. Tear off a pair of tickets.
2. Give one raffle ticket to the bike owner.
3. Wedge the other one in between the spokes. If they have radial spokes, aerowheels, or spokes that don't touch (high end wheels and old schwinns) just tape it to the frame or wedge them somewhere else like a brake hood.
4. When they come back to retrieve their bike make sure the numbers match.

NOTE: If you keep track of the number of the first ticket, and subtract it from the number of the last ticket, you have a count of how many bikes you parked for the day!

Coat-check system is more polished, and avoids some of the pitfalls of the raffle-ticket system: the tags aren't as easy to lose as tickets, large numbers are easier to match, making it less likely to give away the wrong bike, and the system is completely reuseable, eliminating waste.

Order coat check numbers on the Internet: these are paired numbers printed on plastic disks with a hole in the top for placing on a coat hanger. Also get some plastic wrist coils from IDWholesaler. Put a number on each wrist coil, and use some sort of loop (we started with elastics) on the corresponding number. Attach the matching numbers together.

Instructions

1. Take a pair of numbers out of the "unused" bin or rack (by having a unused and used bin, we know at the end of the day how many bikes we parked).
2. Give the wrist coil to the cyclist.
3. Attach the matching number to the bike: with a loop or elastic you can clove hitch it to the handlebar.
4. When they come back, verify the numbers match and give them their bike.
5. Attach the two numbers together and dump in the used bin.
6. When you've finished parking bikes, count either the used or unused bins to see how many bikes you parked. This may seem tedious, but it is important information for seeking funding or selling this service to other organizations.

Alternatively,

1. Keep the numbers in numerical order on a pole (a bicycle rim suits this purpose very well, and is an excellent way to recycle with a bicycle theme).
2. Pass out the numbers in numerical order.
3. As you have people return, put their numbers into a used bin.
4. When you've finished, the last number on the pole or rim is the number of bikes you parked plus one.

Storing the Bikes

Trisport Canada Inc. uses this saw horse rack at their races

Bottom Bracket Type Display Stands

1. Build a tall saw horse out of either metal or wood and hang the bikes by their seats.
2. Cycle-Safe has a professional version of a saw horse called the Bike-Check™ Portable Bicycle Parking System.
3. Use Bottom Bracket Type Display Stands. NOTE: These will not work with over-sized down tubes.
4. Use kickstands. If you are parking bikes on grass, you might want to grab some small blocks of wood or crushed aluminum cans to put under the kickstands so the bikes don't fall over.
5. Flip the bikes upside down or on their side. DO NOT FLIP OVER THE FOLLOWING:
   • Bikes with lights on handlebars
   • Bikes with computers on handlebars
   • Bikes where all the weight would be on the shifters.
   • Older road bikes where brake housing comes out of the top of the brake hood may damage the cable.
   • Fixed gears can hurt little fingers, it is not recommended that you flip these upside down either.

Valet Bike Parking Services

Recycle-A-Bike

They have done this for bike auctions and other fundraisers and public events.

Salt Lake City Bicycle Collective

Does this for downtown Salt Lake City events such as the Farmers' Market.

Chicago Bicycle Federation

They work with banks to pay for Valet Parking at many down town events through the summer, night time movie nights, food, cultural events, triathlons, and the end of family bike ride.

Simple snow fencing, for the outside barrier, three staff, metal racks for 500 bikes, and paper claim tickets for the patrons and their bikes, a repair stand if you want to get fancy.

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

They do this all the time at major events.

Urban Bike Project of Wilmington

We have and will continue to do so. Big race in Wilmington last year, we parked about 200 bikes...It was a bit of a mess (most of these bikes parked in a half hour immediately following a bike parade) but our first time and plenty to be learned from the experience.

Ohio City Bicycle Co-op

This is one of our most effective outreach avenues. We charge event organizers for the service, and provide as much extra service to users as time allows: safety checks, oil and air, helmet fit, where to ride, etc. Our outline of this service is here:[1]