On Bike Racks

 A pair of videos that still live rent-free in my head are the "Safe City Showdown" pair from Not Just Bikes and Shifter a few years ago. In them, the two bicyclists bike through Amsterdam and Calgary and compare the positive and negative elements of the two rides. The ride in Calgary reveals a bike rack at the hardware store that's the end point of the ride, and the two reviewers have opposite reactions: one is excited to see a rack at the store at all, and the other complains about its poor location and visibility.

It's a strong reminder that the existence of infrastructure is not the same as the quality of infrastructure, and that here in North America we often get too obsessed with the question of whether there is even any non-car infrastructure at all at a given location, and not with whether that infrastructure is actually making bike/pedestrian/transit functional, pleasant, or positive.

This brings me to the subject of bike racks. A friend recently pointed out that the bike rack at their kid's school was big, but functionally only had two spots they could lock up their cargo bike--the two ends.

My bikes aren't as big as theirs, but I also know this feeling very well.

Another friend recommended I write about that here--and so I am. What makes a bike rack better than merely existing? What bike racks might be worse than nothing? And how do we tell the difference?

1. Is It Significantly Better Than Leaving My Bike Out?

There are a surprising number of bike racks that are not, actually, much better than just leaving my bike out.

Sometimes, that's because the rack is unusable or doesn't fit my bike, so I have to leave my bike out anyways.

Cool as bikeshare is, it doesn't actually include any parking for my own bike, for instance.

Sometimes, it's because the bike rack isn't actually secured to anything, so while it's more bulky for a thief than just having my bike there, it's not really much more secure.

This rack can be moved anywhere, and often is (I frequently see it on the other side of that staircase, for instance) which doesn't really give one a sense of security.

2. How Much Can I Use?

This goes back to my friend's point: sure, there might be a bike rack, and I might even be able to use it, but what percentage of the actual rack is useable to me?

This rack has one usable space for my cargo bike, because the other end is on the wall and the middle spots are too tight together to allow my cargo bike access. So I can lock up on one end, only.

This rack has two spots for me, despite being advertised, I'm sure, for a dozen.

These racks are better proportionally, though because they're higher up they are useful for different bikes--still, as a proportion of space, it's much superior to the wide racks whose middles are useless for large bikes.

These racks are much better--but they're still a bit tight together for a larger bike. As a matter of spacing, though, they're far superior to the ones above that only work for front tires (ask me how many bikes I've seen that had the front tire removed to steal them over the years).

3. How Many Options?

The bike racks in the tram picture above might seem inefficient, since they can each take at most two bikes, but note that they're really frequent on the street. Toronto does OK with this; Montréal, I noticed, does even better.

This street has a lot of these little posts, which allow a chain to pass through, and also allow the street to have a lot of them without blocking everything else.

If you don't like those because your U-Lock won't go through, perhaps this street full of this design?

Or this one with these?

The key is that the street is just full of places to park your bike, ones that are relatively efficient in space-per-bike and are very firmly anchored in place.

Then there's Amsterdam, of course:

I can scarcely evaluate the actual posts because the bikes are so crammed in there. Frankly, I expect the racks themselves are mid-tier here at best (the underground parking is better) but the sheer quantity of bikes serves as its own protection--is yours the specific one someone will steal?

I like this kind, which as you can see allows for multiple bikes to be anchored well to the ground but has enough space between curves to allow a bigger bike or two.

And the weird hanging racks in downtown Davenport, while not my favorite, do have good anchoring and a number of spots--and there are a sheer lot of them at the Farmers Market, so you can again get a good set of options even if an individual rack is less than optimal.

For huge ones like this cargo bike, the wave rack is not really that different from a single loop--you can only get one on, but hey, at least you got one.

The real key in my mind is this last question of how many options relative to demand. A single rack will probably only take one to two huge bikes like this--and even for smaller, more recreational or single-person bikes, they'll only have so many places that are actually securable (the bike in the first picture in this whole post is attached only with a basic cable lock through the front tire--that's not secure).  But a series of them across a market, a street, or a giant bike parking lot can mean a lot more options even if each individual rack is not ideal.

What you shouldn't do is a single rack that isn't even tied to the ground in any real way and pretends to offer access while really creating merely an illusion of security.

These are cool, though--as long as the tree-sprayer isn't hitting your bike.