Poorly Located Bike Rack Outside Chicago Whole Foods
Last weekend I was in Chicago. Passing by the Whole Foods at Cicero & Peterson I spotted a poorly located bike rack:
So what makes this “poorly located?” First I should note this type of rack, the inverted-U, is my favorite rack. I also like that the rack is highly visible. But this rack is designed to hold one bike per side — two per side if they don’t mind being locked together. But the distance away from the wall makes using the back side difficult. The raised planter to the right is going to make it hard to secure the bike with both wheels on the sidewalk. Centering the rack on a portion of the wall took priority over function. Bike racks should be functional before anything else.
– Steve Patterson
I don't disagree with you, in principle, but there does not seem to be a pressing need for more bike space in this photo.
The planter will present issues when securing a single bike to the street side. This is an example of a common attitude toward bike parking, it allows the team to check ir off their list – “see we provided bike parking”. Never mind it isn't usable.
I was not arguing that the bike rack is optimally functional, but that it seems to be adequate (i.e. if there are no bikes, there is no need for parking for multiple bikes). The current set-up seems to be meeting the need.
Okay, but in the grand sweep of the universe I can think of may urban issues that are more pressing and closer to home — poverty, school dropout, urban sprawl, tax increment financing, crime, need for public transit, depressed neighborhoods, etc., etc. On the other hand I guess that the bike rack problem is easily fixable.
Part of my purpose in this blog is to educate the reader to look for such issues before they are done. When we build from scratch we shouldn't make stupid mistakes such as this. There is always a bigger issue but small quality of life issues impact bigger issues like concentrated poverty, crime and depressed neighborhoods.
Fair enough
it's Fair