It’s Easier Than Ever to E-Bike to the Airport in DC. Will More Cities Follow Suit?

Fast Company reported this week on the growing phenomenon of people biking to the their flights. In DC, a new set of bike and scooter parking stalls was installed over the summer in the parking garage just across from the airport terminal. The rack, from Estonian company Bikeep, was installed in July and allows for parking of both rented e-bikes and flyers’ own personal bikes. The parking is free, and there’s even charging capability so that if you e-bike to the airport, your bike can be ready to go when you return from the trip.

This development, combined with the frequent and convenient metro service to the airport, signifies a bright future for sustainable urban transit, and is exciting news for travelers who don’t want to deal with the hassle and cost of renting a car and parking it in the city. There are several cities in the United States alone that could easily implement what Reagan National has done (I’m looking at you, Sea-Tac International Airport, McCarran International, and LAX). DC did – who will follow?

Why don’t more people bike to the airport

Photo courtesy Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority

The vast majority of travelers are never going to ride a bike to airport. It’s simply not doable in most cases. Biking to the airport with checked luggage is all but impossible unless you have a cargo e-bike. Even then, it’s not practical and parking that cargo bike would likely be either not doable or incredibly awkward. Biking to the airport is a carry-on only game, which eliminates a fair share of flyers. In many cities, the airport is far from the city center and accessible only via highway or public transit, making biking there all but impossible. For the rest of us, it comes down to two things: the availability of protected bike lanes that make bikers feel safe, and social stigma. The former eliminates almost every major airport in the United States. In regards to the latter, it’s a chicken-and-egg situation – if no one else is biking to the airport, then no one is going to bike to the airport.

In addition to Reagan National, only San Jose International Airport and San Diego International Airport have decent bike parking infrastructure, as Fast Company noted. For those cities with centrally-located airports — Las Vegas and Los Angeles, as additional examples — the first step to overcoming the stigma of zero ridership is for more airport authorities to work with Bikeep and/or local bike share operators to install parking stations in convenient locations near the terminal. Then, they must advertise those bike stations in the same manner as rideshare pickup areas, taxi stations, and public transit stations – via signage in the airport as people are walking towards baggage claim and the exit.

The next aspect is safe passage. Regan National is, as Fast Company noted, adjacent to the Mount Vernon Trail that heads into central DC. This makes it easy for residents and visitors to bike to the airport without having to deal with a hectic roadside approach once they get close. Even though the trail exists for reasons other than going to the airport, this signifies yet another forward-thinking approach by DC in terms of urban transit – connecting bike paths to major city infrastructure. Flyers aren’t going to even think about biking to the airport if there isn’t a safe way to do so.

This got me thinking about how biking to the airport could play out in cities that don’t have protected bike lanes or paths the entire way there. I live about a 20-minute drive from the regional airport in Grand Junction, Colorado, where I frequently depart from. Riding my e-bike there would take only about 40 minutes, shorter than the commute I regularly took to Denver International Airport from the other side of the metro area when I lived there. But I’ve never done it. Why is that?

The answer, I believe, is that there isn’t any infrastructure in place to make biking to the airport a “thing” that people do. Grand Junction Regional Airport has a small metal bike rack out front of the terminal, but leaving an expensive e-bike there for multiple days as thousands of people come and go right by it doesn’t inspire confidence in its security. A Bikeep rack would make it a no-brainer for me, however. The city is bike-friendly, and what likely needs to happen is that someone just needs to do it. Someone needs to break the stigma and leave a bike parked at the rack for a while so that others see it. I have an old front-suspension mountain bike in my crawl space that has for years been in need of a good use. I commit to this: within the next six months, I will ride my bike to the airport. Then, I’ll take a photo of it parked in front of the terminal and post it to Instagram and write an op-ed to the local newspaper seeking to start the conversation about how we as a community can get more people to follow suit. For me, it’s easy – I live in a small metro area with a small airport. To help this movement grow, I challenge a frequent flyer out of LAX, Sea-Tac, and McCarren to do the same. The next time I’m in your city, I’ll follow suit.