Everyone knows that the greenest vehicle  you can buy is a bicycle, but two pronounced issues with transportation bicycling in Northeast Ohio are (1) a lack of a unified network of bicycle paths and lanes to faciliate bicycle commuting and (2) a lack of secure facilities to park and lock your bicycle. 

The Cleveland Clinic has done a lot of work in the past couple years to faciliate bicycle commuting, walking, and transit uses and recently the Clinic created a bicycle parking map to assist workers and visitors alike in determining the optimal bicycle parking facility that best accommodates your destination.  The map can be viewed online on the portion of the Cleveland Clinic's site devoted to Employee Wellness. 

Incidentally, the Manager of the Clinic's Employee Wellness Program is Daivd  Pauer, an avid transportation cyclist who commutes from Lakewood most days.  On November 11, Mr. Pauer delivered a fantastically intriguing presentation (pdf flyer) on how road infrastructure can be shaped & operated to best facilitate walking, biking, and mass transit usage; in addition to driving.  This model of road design is commonly referred to as Complete Streets.

The bicycle parking map created as a product of the Clinic's Employee Wellness Program is a great start to faciltating a change in behavior that enables more people, whether staff or visitor, to commute via bicycle to the Clinic's Main Campus.  The next step in this process will be the design and placement of bicycle parking signs on the various parking garages that offer these facilities.  Well placed signage will best facilitate users as they approach the Clinic via bicycle.  A further suggestion would be to place photos of the outside of the facilities on the web based map in order that users know precisely what to look for (in addition to good signage) as they approach the heavily car trafficked main campus.  In the near future, similar bicycle parking maps & wayfinding may be as common as the nearly ubiquitous car parking maps currently promoted by cities and travel bureaus.

David Pauer's complete presentation entitled "Can Your Neighborhood Help You Lose Weight? How We Can Re-design Our Communities, Worksites, and Schools to Increase Activity" which was given on Nov 11, 2009, will soon be available in it's entirety via:
http://www.cchs.net/wellness/grandrounds.asp