The City of Santa Barbara installed a bike corral on Tuesday in the 100 block of Canon Perdido near Santa Barbara Street.

Bike corrals are in-street bicycle parking areas that typically replace one or two automobile spaces in commercial areas where a significant number of bicycle trips are present. Other cities around the country have implemented bike corrals, mainly to respond to business and community desires to increase parking capacity — in this case 14 new bike parking spaces.

The bike corral effort was led by the businesses located on Canon Perdido and Santa Barbara ztreets. The business owners approached the city’s Public Works Department with a desire to increase and organize bicycle parking on this block of the downtown.

“The bike corral is a tool we are willing to try in order to meet businesses and community transportation needs,” said Rob Dayton, principal transportation planner.

The bike corral is a demonstration project to evaluate better access to the businesses in the area. It will be evaluated based on how well it is used and brought back to city committees to determine its effectiveness. Bike corral users, business owners and customers will be asked to contribute to the assessment of the demonstration project.

— Peter Brown is the interim mobility coordinator for the City of Santa Barbara.