A budget commitment to 500 bike lockers could make NYC’s cycling infrastructure globally competitive — if it actually gets built
Nine Years Later, the Money Is Finally There
In 2017, New York City announced a plan to build secure, weatherproof bike parking across the five boroughs. Nothing happened. The plan sat dormant through multiple administrations, through a cycling boom that added millions of new trips annually, and through years of bike thefts that deterred untold numbers of New Yorkers from commuting by bicycle. In 2021, then-Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani showed up to a press conference about secure bike parking — on a bike. The irony was not lost on anyone: the future mayor was literally cycling to an event about cycling infrastructure that the city had failed to build. Now, as mayor, he has finally put real money behind the plan. Mayor Mamdani’s preliminary budget for fiscal year 2027 includes $25 million to build a network of 500 secure bike lockers across New York City, as part of a contract the city awarded to California-based Tranzito. Streetsblog NYC, which has closely tracked the issue, reported that cycling advocates were “heartened” by the fact that the mayor spotlighted the investment as a budget priority alongside increases for bus and bike lanes — a signal, they said, of genuine leadership commitment rather than bureaucratic checkbox-ticking.
Why Secure Parking Matters
Bike theft is one of the most significant deterrents to cycling in New York City. The Metropolitan Transit Authority estimated that theft concerns prevent hundreds of thousands of potential cyclists from committing to bicycle commuting. The challenge is not just the theft itself but the insecurity: knowing that a bike parked outside is vulnerable creates ongoing anxiety that discourages consistent use. Secure, enclosed bike lockers — the kind common in cities across Europe and Japan — address this problem directly. They allow cyclists to leave expensive bikes overnight, to commute in all weather, and to extend their trips beyond the immediate range of home. Jon Orcutt, a former DOT policy official in the Bloomberg administration, told Streetsblog that the $25 million investment was a welcome signal of leadership support. But he also noted the scale challenge: 500 units for a city of 8.5 million people is “a small, almost pilot-level start” compared to what European cities have achieved. For comparison, the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in London — covering a population of under 200,000 — announced plans to install 500 bike hangars on its own in 2024.
The Cycling Context
The investment comes during a period of remarkable growth in New York City cycling. According to Streetsblog’s analysis of DOT bike counter data, New York recorded more than 15.3 million bike trips in 2024, up from 11.5 million in 2022 — a 33 percent increase in just two years. Two East River bridges, the Williamsburg and the Queensboro, each surpassed two million annual crossings last year for the first time ever. The boom is happening despite, not because of, recent city policy. Under Mayor Eric Adams, the NYPD began issuing criminal summonses to cyclists for routine moving violations — a policy Mamdani promised to end but has not yet stopped. The administration has continued to allow Tisch’s crackdown, even as cyclists face criminal court appearances for running red lights. The contrast — $25 million for bike lockers alongside an ongoing criminalization of cycling — reflects the complexity of an administration inheriting contradictory policies and moving on some fronts faster than others. Streetsblog NYC has documented the criminal summons situation extensively, noting that courts are dismissing the majority of cases. Transportation Alternatives, the leading street safety advocacy group in the city, has called on the administration to end the criminal summons policy immediately. Transportation Alternatives executive director Danny Harris has framed secure bike infrastructure as essential to realizing the city’s climate goals: every car trip replaced by a bike trip reduces emissions, reduces traffic, and reduces the demand for expensive parking infrastructure that consumes valuable urban land.
