Portland may not have invented on-street bike parking, but I'm pretty sure we coined its name: bike corral.  Simply put, bike corrals are groups of bike racks installed on the street instead of the sidewalk.  While they come in all different sizes and styles, they've really caught on in Portland - we have 73 locations in the city (and Vancouver's got one too!)

Can bike corrals stop this from happening? Image: Streetsblog.org

Now New York is getting into the on-street bike parking game (Brooklyn, aka "Big Portland," to be exact.)

Streetsblog.org posted a video story today about the new Brooklyn corral, explaining that the city's transportation department not only wanted to increase bike parking but wanted to improve visibility to tackle a crash-plagued intersection.

According to the article, the city thought about several different solutions to the problem but settled on the bike corral because it dramatically increased visibility for road users.  It probably didn't hurt that bike corrals are very inexpensive compared to other transportation infrastructure projects.

If you want to learn more about Portland's 73 and growing bike corrals, visit the website.