Hasta La Ideas

It must be the retirement fantasy of every parking meter: to live out one’s days away from the quarter-pumping frenzy without ending up in the scrap heap. Beginning this spring, some New York City parking meters will live the dream. The city’s latest green transportation plan calls for lopping off the heads of 225 parking meters and transforming them into bike racks. “It’s the ultimate recycling to transform the old meters into bike parking racks,” city Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan told The New York Post recently. “This is a whole new alchemy of the street. We have a special design for the bike rack that is adapted to fit on a meter pole.” Like all good alchemical reactions, this one will involve metal: specifically, a pair of cast iron semicircles that will be attached to each headless parking meter. The design is a hit in Toronto, which has already installed 16,000 of the ring and pole bike racks. Similar programs are also underway in cities including Chicago and Los Angeles. Meanwhile, in New York, the figurative language keeps coming! Wiley Norvell, spokesman for the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, supplies a simile: “For cyclists, this new plan is like beating swords into plowshares.”

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