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.
I would love, love, LOVE to see this blog entry turned into a 1-page poster that could be printed out and handed to business owners. My boyfriend has been working with a cycling advocacy organization to install better bike racks in front of businesses, and sometimes they need to see something like this to understand why they’re being approached to make a change.
The best bike parking in my small town is at the mega-supermarket on the outskirts. Damn them for having something good and wholesome! It means my hatred cannot be pure.
The other thing that gets me is when “they” (unspecified numpty) take a perfectly good “sheffield rack” and run it parallel to a wall instead of of perpendicular to it, thus halving the effecting number of bikes per rack and takes up approximately 3 times more wall space than it should, thereby going from say a potential 18 bikes to about 3 or 6 if it’s long enough for two to fit against one side of the rack.
I so identify with your comics that illustrate crappy bike racks in comic #1 & #4. Thankfully one of my local grocery stores installed a more practical bike rack set that was put across 2 car parking spots. It’s a great statement /gesture by a grocery store. And I’m always pleased to see several bikes locked when I use it. More cycling customers can be accommodated than a car driver. 🙂
I came from Toronto where I used to live and ….over 20 years ago, the city installed excellent bike rack design (post and wheel) all over the place.
Spot on!