Racking up Points
The good news is a lot of places have started adding bicycle racks to accommodate people who arrive by bike. The bad news is, these racks don’t actually accommodate people who arrive by bike.
Putting a rack in some dark corner does not make a place bike friendly.
I’d no more want to leave my bike there as a parent would want to leave their child here:
Even when the bike rack is placed in plain daylight out front, it doesn’t necessarily mean we can actually lock up to it.
Also, the bike rack you bought may have been designed to fit your budget but not actually designed to fit real bikes.
These bike-friendly gestures are basically empty gestures. None of us will bother to lock up to these racks since we want to keep our bikes (and all it’s pieces) intact. It’s our ride home after all.
Instead, we will lock up to something, anything, more secure.
So, when buying and installing a bike rack please consult someone who rides a bike.
For a while I was keeping a blog of terrible bike parking setups: http://ridiculousbikeparking.com/ – I ended up with a whole system of categorization. I haven’t been biking as much the last year and a half, plus I had covered most of my usual spots, so it’s somewhat abandoned, but I wouldn’t mind reviving it. 🙂
so true about the bicycle racks ALWAYA being were the smokers hang out. loove your comic.
Great post! It is so true that bicycle parking is almost always an after-thought in development process. As much as I hate required parking minimums for automobiles, the model provided there makes the path to better bicycle parking clear: Get your local government to require bicycle parking. Good examples of bicycle parking regulations can be found in a number of cities incuding Portland, OR (little too perscriptive maybe), Madison, WI and Hailey, ID. If you see a problem complain about that problem. However, if you want the problem addressed bring a potential solution to the table and you are much more likely to see positive results.
Funny how this topic is focussed on lately. I had a post on my blog on this a few weeks ago: http://nuernberg2rad.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/abstellen-abschliessen-anschliessen/ (german)