Harvard University Bike Shelters

Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, is synonymous with higher education and prestige. With an enrollment of over 20,000 students, sustainability and transportation options remain an ongoing concern. Like many schools, Harvard has been actively promoting a biking lifestyle with a number of incentives including a bike-sharing program, on-campus bicycle repair stations and improved parking options for cyclists.

Monarch was instrumental in the development of Harvard’s new covered bike shelters.

The first phase consisted of two 40-foot enclosures designated for placement outside Pound Hall, home to the Harvard Law School Bulletin and the Office of Development and Alumni Relations (amongst others). The completed shelters would house 26 new bicycle racks for students and staff. Construction began in March of 2010.

Monarch’s Urban Series of shelters are defined by a single-tier roof, aluminum extrusions and bolted construction. The modern aesthetic provides ample protection from the elements while providing cyclists with a spacious area to secure their bikes.

As with all of our transit shelters, the design is completely modular and engineered for any number of desired future expansions or add-ons. For example, solar panels could be incorporated to form the roof, providing ongoing self-sustaining lighting options. Whether the design calls for tempered glass or acrylic, natural lighting or energy-efficient LED illumination, our pressure-fit mechanically-sealed design allows for any number of materials to be used. Our shelters are highly adaptable to the surrounding location and easily maintained.

Monarch sent a representative from the Vancouver office to oversee the structures’ final placement, ensuring the installation was trouble-free. The supplied instruction manual removed any guesswork from the assembly stage. On-site construction took a small team approximately four days to complete.

Laying concrete over the bolted base plates resulted in a cleaner look, not only providing a smoother transition between post and ground but made for an overall safer structure.

Appropriately, the new shelters were ready by  Earth Day 2010.

We ended up being tendered by different contractors and architects in subsequent phases of Harvard’s bike shelter plans. With the existing model numbers, pre-engineered pieces, and rendered drawings already in place, we were able to execute this additional work with ease.

We’re familiar with and are able to seamlessly integrate our shelters with the leaders in the commercial bike rack industry including Dero, Uline, Cora and Barco.

The resulting bike shelters elicited further interest from the city of Cambridge concerning their own proposed transit strategy. In 2013, Harvard was recognized by the  League of American Bicyclists organization. They deemed the school a silver-level Bicycle Friendly University. This title designated Harvard the best of any Ivy League institution and the highest-ranked within Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont.