Why are most of the bike racks outside stores, if they exist at all, such poor designs.

Most are designed so that a bike with a frame mounted rear rack will not fit fully and the rack top bar seems designed to destroy a rear rack mounted taillight if you try.

I ran across one today that was too short vertically to even take a 700C wheel with a 32mm tire installed. Looked like it was intended to fit a 24" wheeled kids bike maximum. Looks like designed and bought by people who know nothing about bikes. Also the center section was caved in as if a car had hit it. A total piece of crapola and installed so a car could hit it.

Do others of you have similar problems with many or most public bike racks?

The rack at work is of that jail cell bar type. If you ask me, the only two suitable locking points are at the two ends so you can U-lock it up. I see other people place their entire wheel/fork over the top so they can use a ulock, but if you can't do that with fenders on any bike. Even when my fenders are off, the cross check has a geometry where doing that would place the weight of the bike on the headset cup, which isn't acceptable. So yah, those racks suck. Luckily only ~3-4 people use the rack and only one gets in earlier than me, so I always have an end point.

Bikes are toys. What in the world are you doing riding a bike? You're an adult...

That's why racks are often designed for childrens bikes. I find that dense urban areas with racks installed by the city favor loops and other well designed bike racks.

Dude, you're lucky you even have bike racks. I'd guess in Boston there's one rack space for every five bicycles that might need it...maybe less.

You have stores with bike racks? Consider yourself lucky...the only "store" within 5 miles of me with a bike rack is a Dairy Queen.

and even that is staff parking only. and it's uphill both ways

because they don't consult a cyclist for things cyclists use

There's a rack at the store I frequent, but it isn't attached to anything. I suppose no one's tried to haul it away in a pickup yet.

I've seen a number of racks that have been sawn through... guess it's much easier than going through an U-Lock... bike gets thrown in a van and the thief can cut the lock in his/her underground smelly hole (or wherever bike thieves live

form vs function

https://nycityracks.wordpress.com/
https://www.davidbyrne.com/art/bike_r...om_8_19_08.php

i don't know what to say with that set up but i think that's unprofesional. i don't know, maybe the designer is only a beginner.

interesting that NYC has how many millions of residents and how many millions of day workers - so are we to be impressed with 9 bike racks? hmmm ... that should go a long way, huh

anyone got pics of good functional bike racks?

Bike racks are generally chosen by building architects and city planners. Sometimes there are city regulations requiring businesses to have them.

I was on a bicycle advisary committee for my city and one of the things we did was recommend a certain type of rack for all future city projects that would also become the preferred type on all projects that the city had to approve. Want to make a difference? Get involved.

So, let me flip the question around: What would a good rack look like? I've used various racks, liked some, disliked others, and haven't really thought about most of them very hard. What makes a good rack good, and what makes a bad rack bad?

A good rack:
-is properly secured to the ground
-is not designed to hold a bicycle by the wheel
-allows the frame to be secured to the rack with a small U-lock WITHOUT having to lift your front wheel over the rack.

I found a pretty good set of bike rack pictures (good and bad, with explanations) here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/luton/s...7594577122134/

+1... and a *great* rack has a roof!

Yeah... the racks where I work fit the bill on everything (including the roof) except the 'secured to the ground' bit.

The worst rack I have seen is actually in front of the Performance store here in Beaverton. Its a series of small rings. They aren't big enough to hold the bike up by the front wheel and are barely wide enough apart to fit a rear wheel w/ rack in it. The whole thing is maybe a foot deep. Ill have to get a picture the next time I go through there.

The employees know its crap and they just let me bring my bike into the store.

City of Toronto post-and-ring. They're not perfect, but they're better than most racks...

The *perfect* rack will also want to go home with you and not wait till closing time.

The ends are nice, if the rack is designed to support that. The racks where I work are constructed such that the end sections are actually bolted together, as opposed to the welded metal "jail cell bar" section. One could take a wrench to the bolts at the end and simply slip any bike locked to the end right off of the rack. People still lock their bikes there, though. Happily this is in a very low-crime area, far away from the street.

I'm fortunate enough to be able to store my bike at my desk at work. But, on some days I ride to a local climbing gym to pull on some plastic. (Beats going to Crown Burger with my coworkers). The gym has the world's worst bike rack (see attachment).

The hooks are about seven feet off the ground, so you gotta lift your bike up and hang it from the hook, and then the crossbar under the hooks is so close to the wall you can't get a normal u-lock (let alone the mini I carry) through both the bar and any part of the bike. So, when the rack is (rarely) used most of the bikes are left unlocked. I just wheel my bike into the gym and lean it against the wall where I can keep an eye on it. Whoever designed that rack obviously never used it.

Segfault: It's been a loooong time since I've seen a ******* Operator from Hell reference. Now I'm going to have to to reassign the tape device to NULL just for old times sake.

These are pretty decent:

https://www.cora.com/

They give advice for placement too.

This is what we have at work - there's even a roof! (covered parking garage)

1. bikes are toys
2. can't carry much merchandise on a bike
3. bikes are for kids

where's the money? where's an example that putting in secure bike parking increased sales?

build it, prove it and they'll mushroom