At its Nov. 15 meeting the Sandpoint Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee reviewed a staff-prepared downtown bike-parking inventory and directed volunteers and staff to reconcile differences between formal racks and informal bike parking.

Staff liaison Eric Rubenker told the committee that the map depicts reported parking as a cluster of blue dots and explained, “Each of those dots represent 1 bike parking place.” He said committee members used different counting methods in the survey: some counted only anchored racks while others included informal parking such as bikes leaned against signposts and tree wells.

Committee members raised event-related constraints around Farm and Park, where market booths remove bike parking during events, and the need to prioritize spots close to destinations rather than concentrating racks in a single municipal lot. Members also noted broken sidewalk concrete and other site constraints where staple (hairpin) racks would require coring and footings.

Rubenker said the city has unassembled staple racks in storage from past revitalization work and that Public Works could install them once prioritized: “We could mobilize these, like, over the winter or next spring and have them installed,” he said, noting the cost would be primarily labor. The committee agreed staff should first separate formal racks from informal lean locations in the dataset; several members volunteered to reconcile counts using Google Street View.

Chair Kate Houston summarized the next steps: Katie Stapleton will collect additional block-level data and staff will refine the map with color coding to distinguish formal vs. informal parking. The committee did not take a formal vote on specific installations at this meeting; members directed staff and volunteers to return with a refined inventory for future action.