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The first Bike & Ride facility from transit agency TriMet opened today to provide a secure parking structure for 74 bikes, TriMet announced today.

The facility, at Sunset Transit Center at Southwest Barnes Road and Oregon 217, is the first of three planned facilities to open. The facilities are an effort by TriMet to provide parking for cyclists who wish to utilize bus or light-rail transportation on part of their bicycle trips. It was built on eight vehicle parking spaces in the transit center’s 630-car garage.

In addition to using cameras as a security measure, the parking structure also features access by key card, on which cyclists can pay for time like they would pay on a parking meter. The cost for a key card is $20, which is good for approximately 10 weeks of daily parking.

TriMet plans to open two more facilities by October: one at Beaverton Transit Center that would offer 100 bike parking spaces and one at Gresham Central Transit Center that would offer 30 spaces.

The new bike parking facility cost $275,000. The facilities are being built with $1.1 million in federal stimulus from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Some of the money will go toward fixing 174 existing bike lockers and adding 380 bike parking spaces throughout the Portland-metro area.