Beyond bike lanes, the Silver Spring Transit Center may even get its own bike station. There’s money and a plan in place that just needs follow-through.

Bike parking at the Silver Spring Metro today. Photo by the author.

Other than twenty bike lockers that cost $120/year to rent, there’s a lack of secure, sheltered bike storage at the Silver Spring Metro. That keeps people, myself included, from biking there. A bike shelter would address expected increases in bicycle parking demand that will come with the opening of the Silver Spring Transit Center, the Purple Line, and the extension of the Capital Crescent Trail and Metropolitan Branch Trail.

The Union Station bike station. Photo by BeyondDC on Flickr.

A multi-service, staffed bicycle parking station at the Silver Spring Transit Center would look a lot like the bike station at Union Station. It could even have lockers, showers, or a bicycle repair station.

There are real plans to fund the bike station

The idea of a bike station in Silver Spring has been around for years. Like delays with the transit center, it just keeps falling through the cracks.

However, nearby developers began to commit money to the project back in 2010, and there is about $500,000 set aside for the bike station at this point. Planning firm Toole Design Group completed a detailed study on a potential bicycle station at the Silver Spring Transit Center back in January 2014.

Some funding will come with Gene Lynch Urban Park, a new park that will be built across the street from the transit center. But the potential bike station also needs two nearby projects to move forward whose developers agreed to provide funding when they were approved: a hotel and apartment complex called Silver Spring Park and an apartment building at 8621 Georgia Avenue.

Right now, the bike station most needs drive to keep pushing it forward. Loss of staff and lack of budget have forced county planners to postpone their most recent efforts. Planners initially hoped to organize a one-day bike valet to highlight the demand for secure bike parking at the Silver Spring Metro, but that has now been pushed back at least until next summer.

Until the government officials or the bike and transit advocates take the lead on this project, it may continue to fall through the cracks.