Folding Bikes - The BBC's "The etiquette of bike parking"

Perhaps some of the more eloquent posters here would like to add their comments to the BBC about the best method of all of parking your bike.. the folding solution :love:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7534963.stm

The BBC gets 2.3 billion pounds a year, and they produce rubbish features like that?

Bah! Humbug! I have added a pithy note of the folding persuasion to their monstrosity of a 'web sight'.

The BBC gets 2.3 billion pounds a year, and they produce rubbish features like that?

Bah! Humbug! I have added a pithy note of the folding persuasion to their monstrosity of a 'web sight'.

They usually won't publish my remarks. I think I may not be PC enough for their Arts Grad editors.

The BBC gets 2.3 billion pounds a year, and they produce rubbish features like that?

Bah! Humbug! I have added a pithy note of the folding persuasion to their monstrosity of a 'web sight'.

Can't see it there. You must like me, lack the PC gene necessary to get through their censors.

Can't see it there. You must like me, lack the PC gene necessary to get through their censors.

I can't imagine why. Or, rather, I can. I worked for the BBC for a while, and curse the day I spilled my BBC coffee-machine simulated beverage-style insipid bloddy BBC ersatz drink on their plush format-ridden carpets, paid for by a vicious tax on the blind.

Bah! An institution. :crash::crash::crash::crash::crash:


Much revered abroad though. Hmmm.

Snot PC, its the public school/Oxbridge elite who can't handle the idea of articulate normal people.

Exterminate...exterminate All Earthlings




I like the part where it says " Eventually, when fully tested and improved"......any volunteers?

I can't imagine why. Or, rather, I can. I worked for the BBC for a while, and curse the day I spilled my BBC coffee-machine simulated beverage-style insipid bloddy BBC ersatz drink on their plush format-ridden carpets, paid for by a vicious tax on the blind.

Bah! An institution. :crash::crash::crash::crash::crash:


Much revered abroad though. Hmmm.

I think of it with great affection, being a Radio 4 addict, but I feel about it like I would a favourite aunt who had an illness - I hope she can be cured of her PC infection and once again regain her health.

The BBC gets 2.3 billion pounds a year, and they produce rubbish features like that?

Bah! Humbug! I have added a pithy note of the folding persuasion to their monstrosity of a 'web sight'.

Its not rubbish. In bike friendly countries its a real problem. The BBC talks about far more trivial stuff. Last time I listened to the BBC AM chat, they talked about the proper way to serves scones. / What if we don't want a folder. I tried one, I could not get used to that small wheel and their wobbliness. I want a real bike. / We provide parking for cars don't we. Why is the matter trivial. Try to hitch your bike to something and you find out the wall space is totally consumed. Employers often provide car parks. Why should bikes be discriminated against.

cyclezealot. You are right about discrimination against cyclists. The need for more cycle parking faciiltiies is very clear, especially with the 91% increase in cyclists since 2000. I also disagree with Snafu21 that the BBC website is a 'monstrosity'. It is actually very good overall but this feature isn't an example of that.

I totally agree with Snafu21 that the article is 'rubbish'. Would the average person really lock their bike to another?! More of a thief trick that. Or the comment on folders not endearing the owner to office colleagues because of oil and grease spill. How representative is that? Oh good idea to avoid wall marks or blocking a common hallway in apartments, I can suspend the bike from the celing instead or may be bring it in hang over the TV inside my apartment maybe? No hang it over the main entrance door would be the most impressive!

The stuff about not locking to private railings or the need for better facilities is fine but apart from that the article is patronising rubbish as if speaking to children and largely flawed in its reference to folding bikes in the office environment.

The BBC has produced world-class journalism on occasion but not this feature. The BBC hasbecome a politically correct monolith that isn't answerable enough to the taxpayers that fund it and the output is far too mixed quality these days. Suffice to say, one of my mature students who works in the BBC has 4 different ethnic strains and regards herself as 'mixed race'. Internal BBC policy declared 'mixed race was a racist term and insisted on the use of the words 'dual heritage'. Isn't that assuming that all mixed race people only have 2 ethnic origins? Absolute rubbish that and shows the kind of levels the BBC have descended to. This reflects in the decline in their external output too.

[QUOTE=mulleady;7181460]cyclezealot. You are right about discrimination against cyclists. The need for more cycle parking faciiltiies is very clear, especially with the 91% increase in cyclists since 2000.
I totally agree with Snafu21 that the article is 'rubbish'. Would the average person really lock their bike to another?! More of a thief trick that.
quote


Pay attention to the bike forums Commute threads . Yes, it happens. I recall one incident of a University student, not being able to ride home after classes because some jerk locked a bike to his bike. And since the police did not have evidence that the first bike actually belonged to the aggrieved person, they would not allow that student to cut his bike free of the second bike. . Ever try to find a free wall space in Amsterdam to hitch your bike to. I am sure it happens more often than one thinks.

Pay attention to the bike forums Commute threads . Yes, it happens. I recall one incident of a University student, not being able to ride home after classes because some jerk locked a bike to his bike. And since the police did not have evidence that the first bike actually belonged to the aggrieved person, they would not allow that student to cut his bike free of the second bike. . Ever try to find a free wall space in Amsterdam to hitch your bike to. I am sure it happens more often than one thinks.Aye aye sir will do! :)

I tend to read the folding bikes one 99% of the time.

I still think the BBC article is rubbish overall! :P

It reads as if it was writen by a seven year old for a school project. Vanessa needs to get out of Notting Hill more. Having said that, bike parking in London is becoming a real problem, where i live there is hardly a lampost, street sign, tree, railing that does not have at least one bike locked to it. To say this is quite often an inconvienience for pedestrians is an understatement. there is a desperate need for more bike parking facilities, but how are they to be paid for ? Only a matter of time before someone suggests a tax on all new bikes sold, the money raised could then be filtered through any number of central and local government departments and may, in the end, result in one or two bike racks being erected. What i want to know is what happens to all the abandonded bikes, they get a label attached to them, and then taken away, where do they go to, and how can i get hold of the cream of them ?

Once I recall the BBC had a sewing hour, so I doubt this is the first time one thought the BBC trite. Often the media gets their stories from the affected agencies. This story likely came directly from the the greater London transit authority.

. What i want to know is what happens to all the abandonded bikes, they get a label attached to them, and then taken away, where do they go to, and how can i get hold of the cream of them ?

With the price of petro maybe London will soon look like Amsterdam. Are bikes taxed on Amsterdam.

In Cambridge, it's a problem.....

Ever go into a parking lot and wonder where you left your car. The above photo looks like an even greater challenge.

Ever go into a parking lot and wonder where you left your car. The above photo looks like an even greater challenge.

hahaha good one! :thumb:

I was actually looking for a picture of railings in Cambridge. There are a lot of railings in that town (due to the old buildings, from when cast iron railings were the thing), and on any given evening, they will be thick with the bikes of people who are off to the pub.

So beware of drunken cyclists on the streets of Cambridge later in the evening!

Bike parking was a real problem when I was in Paris in the spring. It's a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless. Where I live, there are no bike racks so everyone has to scramble for steetsign posts. There aren't that many cyclists, but enough to be a pain when I ride my bike downtown for errands.