Originally Posted by
Darth Lefty
TBF it's the property and not the city that did this. We're pretty good around here, we usually have the big n or m shape set in concrete. There are often even bike boxes but... they are sometimes inhabited. This is a rare miss. I've seen these around Davis too and I think they are bike boom relics. If you had a steel bike, a padlock, and a chain, they would be fine, and quite compact
To be fair my response wasn't fair either. Even so, that design you have photographed isn't fair either. Consider the point you correctly make that a typical steel frame would probably fit fine. But it risks mangling the paint if it fits at all. Consider that larger tubing aluminum bikes are excluded and may actually dent the frame of someone attempting to fit a bicycle in. Consider also people who are small, like kids, or people with folding bikes, or other less mainstream designs like recumbents, tandems, one could go on and on, they will not fit. Also these racks are hard to see at night and present a hazard. All in all a disaster - I despise them. Few survive if any survive where I live. Nowadays I've seen and tried some electronic Bluetooth bicycle locks which require an app install on a smartphone to work and employ a similar crappy and utterly disappointing design. I hate these even more. Good luck if you try to lock your bike in one of those.