Bike advocates protest the removal of city’s only bike corral

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    OMAHA, NE (KPTM ) — Thursday protesters in Benson stacked bikes alongside a car taking up space where Omaha’s only bike corral used to stand. Officials from Public Works removed the corral Wednesday, along with a bicycle that was still attached.

Thursday morning Greg Lilly picked up his bike from the City Public Works Department after locking it to the bike corral in attempt to prevent the city from removing it.

“I was just trying to do everything I could to try to keep that here and keep the infrastructure of bicycling around Benson,” Lilly said.

After six years the bike corral that sat near the 60th and Maple Street is gone. Officials from the Omaha Public Works Department said the rack that used to hold up to 12 bikes at a time is being converted into a single parking space.

“We have an overabundance of bicycle parking in this area that is very underutilized, statistically, and we have a severe shortage of automobile parking,” City Engineer Todd Pfitzer said

Pfitzer said the decision to remove the bike corral was made at an internal Public Works meeting over a month ago, but after multiple people called into the Mayor’s Hotline Wednesday morning, construction was put on hold.

“I made the call and just said, go ahead and pull the crew off, the Mayor’s office wants to do some investigation. About 2:30p.m. or so we got a call back from the Mayor’s office saying go ahead and continue your effort, we didn’t see any reason to stop,” Pfitzer said.

Pfitzer said the installation was done at the request of the bike shop owner, but City Councilman Pete Festersen, who represents the Benson area, said the bike corral was installed as part of the city’s long term plans for Benson.

Around noon on Wednesday representatives from Festersens office also contacted public works asking the project to be put on hold. Pfitzer said after the Mayor said to continue the project, Festersen was not notified when the work began again.

“It’s really troubling. I feel like we were deceived. I feel the residents of Benson deserve better,” Festersen said. “I think we should apologize to the person who had his bike taken to the impound lot. That is not how local government should treat citizens.”

Festersen said the bike corral cost approximately $2,000 when it was installed in 2013. Pfitzer said it cost approximately $600 to have the corral removed.

“There was not a lot of taxpayer costs associated with putting it back. It’s no different than going out and fixing a couple signs that had been knocked down,” Pfitzer said.

Lilly said the city should have notified people who live and work in the area before the corral was removed.

“There’s a lot of community groups around here that will tell you what’s getting used and what’s not getting used; what we need and what we don’t need,” Lilly said. There might be a parking issue here, but taking away 12 bike spots for one car, I don’t think that’s the answer.”

Pfitzer said the Public Works Department would need to see specific data showing there is a need for more bike parking in Benson before the corral could be reinstalled.

Fox 42 reached out to Mayor Jean Stothert for a comment on the removal of the bike corral, but did not get a response.

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