Biking Home From Class

With the onset of so many recent construction projects, the University is perpetually adding and removing bike racks.

Overall, the campus has seen a net gain in bike racks this year, since new construction projects have incorporated an expanded number of racks into their designs, says Manager of Administrative Operations in Harvard Yard Zachary M. Gingo.

But bicycle rack congestion continues to plague the Houses. Lowell House, which has five bike racks for its over 450 students, has serious problems with lack of rack space, says Superintendent Jay Coveney.

“We never have enough bike racks around here,” Coveney says. “Everyone in the College wants to park their bikes here because we are centrally located—people who want to run errands, go to the MAC and who just live in the House all use our racks.”

Coveney says he has thought about adding more racks to solve the overcrowding predicament, but no solution comes easily.

“I can’t just materialize bike racks—and it’s more of a matter of where to add them because we only have so much available space,” he says.

As a by-product of the roadway work in the Quad this summer, Cabot House received a number of brand-new bike racks that have eased the overcrowding.

“This year, I haven’t seen the same masses of junky bikes on the racks outside the shuttle stops as there were last year,” says Cabot House resident Samantha Graves ’03. “The racks appear a lot less full.”

Last year, Adams House Superintendent Jorge Teixeira added an indoor bike rack after he observed that bicycles locked to parking meters made it impossible to navigate the Plympton Street sidewalk that abuts Adams House.

“Things have been much better since I installed the new rack,” he says.

Yard Operations added a rack to the Yard this year, and replaced several others with larger-capacity racks.

But these additions do not come without extensive planning that must take into account stringent city regulations.

“Depending on where we want to add them, we need to obtain permission from the Cambridge Historical Commission,” Gingo says. “We can’t simply decide to add a rack at a location because we observe that an area could use one.”

Aesthetic appeal is also a factor. Bike racks take up a lot of space, and often installing them translates into displacing trees and bushes.