When Will The Oak Grove Bike Cage Be Complete?

You Ask, Patch Answers is a new weekly column for Melrosians who have questions about something they've spotted around the city or wondered about. Submit your question to danield@patch.com.

Patrick emailed asking for an update on the new bike cage the MBTA is building at the Orange Line Oak Grove station. "Work started in November/December last year but seem to have completely stalled," he wrote a week ago, adding in a follow-up email that "the work has resumed as of May 1."

MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo explained the stall in construction in an email, saying, "The cage construction involves multiple contractors. The steel contractor experienced delays in getting materials to the site. Work is now underway."

The bike cage costs approximately $350,000, Pesaturo said, and will hold approximately 132 bikes. The target completion date is this summer.

Bike cages with video camera surveillance and gate access control—bikers can open the door with a free Bike CharlieCard they can pick up at the station—are being built at Oak Grove and five other MBTA stations: Braintree, Ashmont, Malden, South Station and Davis.

Funding for the bike cages, which the MBTA are calling "Pedal & Park," comes from the American Recovery and Reinvest Act (ARRA)—colloquially known as the federal stimulus package—which provided the MBTA with $4.8 million for a variety of programs to enhance and expand MBTA bicycle parking facilities.

The MBTA is also building up to 50 covered bike shelters, which they're calling "BikePorts," at subway and commuter rail stations, and expanding the number of conventional bike ricks at MBTA stations.

If you've got a question about something in Melrose, send it to danield@patch.com. We'll choose one question each week and get to work on digging up an answer.