Councillors, CUPE team up to provide six bicycle maintenance stations
Cyclists in Windsor should soon have an easier time tuning up while rolling around.
Councillors Chris Holt and Rino Bortolin are teaming up with the Canadian Union of Public Employees to bring six public bicycle maintenance stations to the city core.
“Everybody needs to inflate their tires or do a quick tighten up of their chain every once in a while,” Holt said Tuesday. “So this would provide a service to the existing cyclists out there, and might encourage new cyclists to get out and about.
“But it also shows a commitment to cycling. Citizens need to know we take alternative transportation seriously.”
Details still have to be worked out. But the cost for six bike maintenance stations in Wards 3 and 4 would likely be around $15,000, plus installation.
The idea is that CUPE will cover $6,000 from the Ward Renewal Fund it uses every year to boost the city, while Holt and Bortolin will pay for the rest from their ward funds — hopefully this summer.
Holt hopes to install stations on the riverfront, at Willistead Park and Optimist Park. Bortolin would like to install the remaining three on the riverfront, at Jackson Park and Mitchell Park.
The idea comes from the Downtown Windsor Community Collaborative, which paid for a bike maintenance station that the city installed in Bruce Avenue Park.
Meanwhile, Bortolin also saw the idea sprouting across the river on Tuesday, when he joined various stakeholders on the two-day Pure Michigan Learning Tour organized by the South West Tourism Alliance, a provincially mandated regional organization.
Bortolin was encouraged that bike stations work in Detroit, where he found inspiration in a number of public initiatives. He also likes the community kitchen in Eastern Market that allows small businesses to produce fare — a hot sauce, for instance — that has outgrown small kitchens.
And he also appreciates the Z Garage, a parking structure filled with art that has attracted businesses all around it.
“There are a lot of interesting things,” he said of the Detroitarea tour. “You can’t go through as many things as we did and not see some great ideas.”