The city installed its first on-street bicycle rack today on Capitol Hill — it’s about the size of a car and holds eight bikes at a time (photo). SDOT plans to add more racks in coming months with the goal of having “one to two per neighborhood.” We checked with Craig Benjamin at Sustainable Ballard, who headed up the Ballard Bike Rack Design Contest last summer, and he said work is expected to begin soon on the first custom-designed bike rack for Ballard.

“We’ve had to do some back and forth to get the design specifications for the first (the “rings”) rack nailed down,” he wrote (sketch shown above). “SDOT’s been great to work with, it’s just taking some time.” We’ll let you know when the first Ballard bicycle rack is unveiled.