Introduction
Some people might describe me as annoyingly picky; I like to think that I just have high standards when it comes to the design, fabrication, and implementation of certain things. One of those things is bike racks. As a cyclist who rides around town a lot, I have to lock my bike to all sorts of different things. I appreciate a good bike rack; conversely I am irritated by bad ones. What follows is a critique of bike racks around the city of Athens, Georgia, which I will update as I find new examples or if changes develop.
What is a bike rack for? Not to be confused with a cargo rack on a bike, a bike rack is, in my view, meant to help a bike to stand upright on its own, and provide a means to secure the bike’s frame and wheels with a lock to prevent theft. The best racks do both jobs well, but many racks do only one or the other to some extent, and some pitiful specimens fall short in both stability and security. These are the two primary criteria I will use here. Aesthetics are important and I will address this too, but how good a bike rack looks is far more subjective than how well it works.
There are plenty of best practice guidelines available, and I do not intend to create another one here. My hope is, rather, that this critique will point out local shortcomings in bicycle parking and encourage good design and implementation for the future.
Public bike racks in downtown Athens
Athens-Clarke County uses the inverted-U type of rack throughout downtown, and I have to say that this humble design is my favorite of all the ones in Athens. (The only style of bike rack that I like more is the coat-hanger, which I would love to see here.) It accommodates any type of lock, offers at least two contact points so you can lock the frame and one or both wheels to it, and if you use your lock correctly it prevents damaging tip-overs. It is attractive in its elegance; it is unobtrusive to non-cyclists and its purpose and function is immediately obvious to the intended user.
Bike racks owned by businesses that you’d expect to have better bike racks
Earth Fare
Here’s an interesting story: I am partly responsible for the bike rack that currently sits in front of Earth Fare. The old one, sort of a slinky to which you could only lock one wheel (though a long cable lock could reach the frame), was the worst rack in town. I know I am not alone in having put a note in the store’s comment box asking the management to consider a replacement. I even drew a diagram of the inverted-U racks that can be found downtown.
One day I was surprised to see the rack had been replaced, but unfortunately I think that the new one is even worse. Besides being a grid-type rack, which is generally discouraged by most guidelines, this rack fails in all possible categories: security, stability, usability, durability, and aesthetics. Unless you have a spot on the end, you can’t lock your frame without a long cable. My 26 x 1.4 city tires barely squeeze into the space between the bottom and top crossbars, so I imagine a knobbier set of tires or a 700c wheel won’t fit at all; indeed the person with the road bike in the photo here opted to hang their front end over the top. If your wheel does fit and you do want to lock it to the rack, there’s no room to walk to the other side to attach your lock, even though that’s the only way you could easily reach an attachment point if the rack is full. The rack itself is not only poorly made of thin-gauge steel, but it was very poorly installed. In my opinion it is unattractive, but on a higher level it is ugly because it is so glaringly obvious how bad it is at its job. It’s no surprise when you go to Earth Fare nowadays and see bikes locked to the fence instead.
It’s really a shame that this rack is so bad, because the location is convenient not only to the Earth Fare shopping plaza but also the Royal Peasant, Five Points Bottle Shop, and the other businesses nearby, none of which have bike parking of any kind.
Jittery Joe’s in Five Points
[Photo coming soon.] Another of the grid-type racks, this one has a cool factor that fits perfectly with the aesthetic of the café itself, but that’s about all it has going for it. Like other racks of its kind it is difficult to lock up to (also partly to do with how close it is to the wall), though I can’t complain about bike stability with this one. For a quick visit to get a coffee to go the security issue is no big deal; for longer visits I’d rather have the rack in front of the shop where you can see it from inside. It’s worth noting that this is not a high crime area, but on the other hand it would be very easy for a thief to disappear down Lumpkin Street long before anyone knew a bike was stolen.
Big City Bread
[Photo coming soon.] Yet another grid-type rack, this one home-made out of gas pipe fittings. Aside from the usual complaints about this type of rack, the dimensions of this one are wrong enough that it doesn’t hold a bike upright very securely. It fits in well with its surroundings, but bikes do not fit in it well. Security-wise it’s fine when there are people eating outside, but I wouldn’t want to leave my bike locked here while I walk around the neighborhood for an extended period.
Bike racks on the University of Georgia campus
Old school
The university is riddled with these old bike racks; from an earlier era when thieves apparently were incapable of detaching wheels from bikes, these racks offer little in the way of security. Your bike will stay upright if the tire is firmly wedged between the rings, but if it comes loose your bike will soon be on the ground. This type of rack is all over south campus (Driftmier, Vet Med, Coverdell, etc.) and around the freshman dorms on Baxter Street. Fortunately these are slowly being phased out.
New school
The modern “squiggle” racks that are part of the UGA design standard are an improvement over the old style, but are by no means ideal. Their main advantage is that only two holes need to be dug for a rack that can accommodate several bikes, as opposed to an inverted-U rack that can only support two bikes for the same amount of installation labor. The problem with the squiggle rack is that it only provides one contact point for the bike, so locking options are few, and unless you use a tight U-lock your bike can easily get knocked over.
Weird school
I have only seen one installation of this bizarre rack, located on the north side of the Coverdell Center. The design is a failure if it needs a label to explain how to correctly lock your bike to it. Hopefully this was a one-off. At any rate, if it is used correctly it looks like your bike would be fairly stable, but not all bikes will fit in the way that the label shows.
Art racks
Don’t get me started. No, do. There’s more to come here, I assure you.
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