By Nicholas Mirra, Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia

One of the goals of our artistic-designed bike rack project is to use the same stretch of the street twice. We want to increase the amount of available bike parking in the city; Center City Philadelphia sees some of the highest rates of bicycling in the country, and there are not enough bike parking spots to accommodate that traffic. We also want to use that stretch of sidewalk to install public art, enlivening our streetscapes.

The benefits of this approach are especially apparent after it snows. When snow hits Philadelphia, the number of people walking or biking to work drops dramatically. Our streets become quieter and calmer, and the snow has a way of paradoxically revealing what normally goes unnoticed. Our eyes normally pass over the standard inverted-U bike racks, or look instead at the colorful bikes attached. But snow removes the bikes and reveals the rack – a desolate stretch of dull black metal, reminding you that everybody else is inside or elsewhere.

Photo by Gary Wilpizeski, Flickr

Instead, imagine Kathleen Fruge-Brown’s birds, pecking through the snow in search of seeds. Or Carin Mincemoyer’s snow clouds bringing the weather to street level. These racks will be interesting in their own right, giving snowy Philadelphia streets unique bursts of color and design. Expect to see floods of Instagram photos this time next year, of Philadelphia’s street art poking up through the snow.