St. Cloud Installs New Bike Racks Downtown

ST. CLOUD -- You may notice some new fixtures being installed if you walk around downtown. Bike St. Cloud and the Downtown Council have teamed up to install some new bike racks.

The 22 green bike racks will each hold between two and six bicycles. Allison Dudek is a Public Health Coordinator for Stearns County. She says the goal is to encourage and support people who bike to work or other local businesses.

We worked to choose locations downtown that are kind of in front of or central to businesses that are heavily used and just kind of going off of where some other bike racks had been placed as well.

The project is being funded by the Statewide Health Improvement Partnership. Kurt Franke is on the City of St. Cloud Transportation Infrastructure Advisory Board. He says in the future they would like to tackle other projects in the city.

With the health focus of this grant that we were able to access, bike racks, bike trails, bike routes, bike lanes. If you put the facilities there, people use them. I would say bike lanes, bike routes would be my next focus, my next interest.

The installations are scheduled to be completed before the national Bike to Work Week event which runs May 13th through the 17th.

In 2018 St. Cloud was recognized as a Bronze Bicycle Friendly Community for their improvements to conditions for cyclists.