Yes, you can, at least within the City of Madison. Madison has an ordinance that prohibits businesses from denying service to people on bikes at drive-throughs. Code of Ordinances, 28.151, Vehicle Access Sales and Service Windows, section (g) states: “Bicyclist use of sales and service windows shall not be prohibited.”
Archives: FAQs
Yes, you can. After a question from a Madison Bikes supporter and some back-and-forth emails, we received this response from Metro:
We discussed and have approved bringing your folding bike onboard (so long as it is folded). As with any large item, the key is to make sure to minimize disruption to other passengers ability to move about the bus. Sometimes it takes a bit of trial and error to find the best spot to stow your large item but I’m sure you’ll develop a system.
I have notified our dispatchers and asked them to get the word out to drivers. We have a very large driver group and it may take a while to get the word out to everyone. Because this is a new development for them, you could encounter some drivers that will not allow the bike on. Please let me know if this happens and I can contact the driver. Our policy still stands that we will not allow bikes inside of buses because of their size, but in my mind, a folding bike isn’t a bike when it’s folded…it’s a bunch of bike parts being transported in a nice neat organized fashion.
Madison Metro
Madison has several of those! Check out Wheels for Winners, Freewheel Bike Collective, Free Bikes 4 Kids, and DreamBikes.
You need a trail pass to ride “on the nine miles of the trail that go through the Capital Springs E-way south of Madison between Verona Road and Nob Hill near Industrial Drive.” However, you can request a subsidized pass if you use the trail primarily for commuting. Cap City Trail website.
There are lots of excellent maps of our bike network. For Madison and Dane County you can get free printed maps as well as pdfs. The Department of Transportation also has pdf bike maps for any county in the state. And the Bike Fed sells printed statewide maps.
Become a Madison Bikes Member. It’s free! Every Monday we publish a blog post with past and upcoming events for the week. You can subscribe to them via email, RSS, and we also post them to our Facebook Page and Group.
Our primary focus is riding for transportation. If you’re interested in MTBing, Capital Offroad Pathfinders is doing great work in and around Madison!
Our primary focus is on Madison. However, our vision acknowledges that connections to neighboring communities are very important and many bike issues don’t stop at city boundaries. Several communities have their own bike advocacy organizations, and we cooperate with them.
For places further away from Madison and for questions at the state level, there is the Wisconsin Bike Fed.
You can report abandoned bikes on public property via the city’s Report-a-Problem form.
If it is a private rack, contact the property owner or management company.
If the bike is parked on the UW campus, email their bike/ped coordinator.
Madison has a zoning code ordinance that details how much bike parking needs to be included with new construction and what kind of bike parking meets the requirements. This ordinance does not apply to already constructed buildings, but businesses or property owners may respond to a friendly ask for bike parking anyway. See above, “A place I am biking to doesn’t have bike parking.”