Bike lockers at work?
 

I'm a school teacher, and when we return to the USA I'm considering the idea of building or purchasing a bike locker for work if I can get approval from the principal/district to do so. Has anyone else tried to do this, successfully or not? Keeping my bike in my classroom has proven difficult in the past with either little or no room to do so, or kids messing with it.
I won't even go into locking my bike up outside with the kids' bikes. :notamused:

You'll go from "Oh Mr Kjmillig, the weird guy who rides a bike to school" to the "Oh Mr Kjmillig, the crazy mofo who built a box to store his bike."
Neither are necessarily bad, but I'd go with option C: find an obscure, low-traffic storage room or something to lock the bike. Is there room in a teacher's lounge or anything?

The answer is "elementary". The principal and administrators might control the students and faculty, but the janitors and school maintenance department run the school property. They usually have a work area that all students and most faculty are locked out of. And they have all sorts of storage areas around the school. First thing you need to do after starting work at a new school is to meet some of those guys in the school maintenance department. Find out if there is anything they need to make their job a little better, and see if you can do something about it. If you do them a favor, they might do you a favor and provide a good secure place to keep your bike.

Make friends with the janitor and put it in the boiler room. A six pack of long neck Buds can buy lots of favors. ( purposely stereotyping).

I'd make the point that the school provides free parking for employees who choose to drive in. Those who choose to bike, walk or take transit in should also have their needs met (secure storage, and possibly a change room, locker to store walking shoes, umbrellas, etc...). A few parking spots or unused corner of the property could easily accomodate a lockable shed or chainlink enclosure, neither of which would be expensive.

If there's a secure storage area for faculty bikes, more might take up bike commuting. This could be especially persuasive if employee parking is a limited quantity. Other incentives to the employer could be recognition for participating in bike to work week, or some equivalent 'healthy workplace' program.

At my workplace, we have adequate bike parking, and a good shower/locker facility. About 15% of the employees bike in on nice days, and about 5% bike in no matter what, year-round. Since the average rate of bike commuting in my city (in summer?) is 2.5% of all trips, I think my employer can take a lot of the credit for the high rates of bike commuting we have. Our bike enclosure is usually full beyond the overflow point (there are also racks). If you're successful, make sure that the facilities you manage to get will accomodate a few extra users! You might be suprised by how many other people will bike, given the chance.

Does your school/ district belong to" Safe routes to School ? "

We moved to new offices a little over a year ago and they gave us lockers and showers, but little more than an afterthought when it came to bike parking and security. After several of us were admonished for hiding bikes around the building, they gave us a crappy little freestanding bike rack outside and told us to lock them out there. Well the bike rack was not only not secure, it was in the path of Fedex trucks making pickups/deliveries, so they moved the rack onto the grass. One day one of my co-workers came out to find his brand new $3000+ Comotion Nor'Wester Tour being "watered" by the automated sprinkler system at 6PM or so. We combined and used our lobbying abilities successfully to where we now have a permanent Saris bike rack mounted in our well lit, warm, and secure Compressor room. It also doubles as a great place for us to hang up our damp cycling clothes so they're warm, dry, and toasty for the commute home. Mission accomplished.

Get yourself a beater bike and lock it up with the rest of the kids.

I totally agree with the boiler room poster. That is what I and my other biking colleagues do at my high school. No one goes down there so it is out of sight of students and if you still feel unsafe, then lock it in there somewhere. Or if enough other coworkers bike, ask for a faculty rack, but that would still be a good room to put the rack in.

+1

If that doesn't work out, buy the cheapest minivan you can find (should be able to find something for $200 or so), have it towed to the school and park it in the faculty lot. Only thing that needs to work is a door lock and you have a fine bike locker.

My bike recently got evicted from my office when a visiting supervisor accused it of cluttering up the workspace. Prior to that, I've parked it there for nearly eight years! I was able to compromise by parking it in an unused storage closet which also provides enough room to change clothes and possibly move a locker into. My commuters are also my nice bikes with too many accessories attached to park them outside or in a public area. Good luck!

Bike lockers have some interesting complications in this pot 9/11 age. At least at my work.

Rules:
you can only use the lock supplied by security (fairly light weigh keyed master lock) that they have the master key to.

you can only use the locker during the day, no overnight storage and no leaving the lock on the locker even with nothing in the locker

apparently this is because they have to control any space where a bomb could be put.

I just use my cube as the my bike doesn't fit the locker and so far facilities hasn't dnged me for it.

Bottom line, some of this stuff may add resistance to getting a locker outside.

Same here. Luckily, where I work there are limited entrances with guards that check IDs, so there are no random people around. My bike is locked up outside in an area where people don't generally mess around, and it's right next to a "fitness" locker room building. So in the locker room, there is a big sign reading "No Overnight or Daytime Storage. Lockers are Only to be Used While Showering" or something like that. When I ride, I leave clothes and panniers in an unlocked locker; no one messes with it (fewer than 10 people use the locker room, so no one messes with anyone else's stuff). One of the other bike commuters does lock his bike shoes in a locker; no one has made an issue of it, mostly because I don't think anyone goes into the locker room except if we request cleaning.

Unfortunately, no.

Why do I want to commute on a crappy bike? Lets tell all the car drivers to drive "beater cars" to avoid vandalism. :(

I didn't say it in the post, but I'm from Texas. What's a boiler room? :rolleyes:

Bike locker suppliers.

http://www.bta4bikes.org/resources/b...ng.php#lockers

Dude, I teach as well so I share your pain. Since I live in New England, there is snow, and therefore my school has a ski-racing team. I coached said team. Since we were leaving for races less than fifteen minutes after the end of school, the kids would bring their skis to school. The school's athletics department gave us a MASSIVE closet that we could keep skis, poles, bags, et cetera during the school day throughout the entire season. This room could easily fit 15 bikes just on the floor, let alone the walls. If I ever brought my new roadie to the school, I would totally press the AD about keeping my bike there rather than the rack outside. However, if I ever take my bike to school, I use my commuter and just U lock it to the rack. I do this for two reasons. First, the student body at my school is fairly mature with bikes and things (looking out the window today, I noticed at least 10-12 bikes in the rack; in a small community that serves two tiny towns and has only about 100 kids a grade, this is impressive stuff!) and students wouldn't mess with each others bikes let alone a teachers. In fact most students don't even lock their bikes to the rack! Some of these kids, coming from affluent families will bring a 2-3k DH bike (lots of mtn trails in the area) and not even consider locking it. Secondly, I would lock it up with the students because keeping my bike away from other students would cause lots of kids to ask and wonder why the teacher gets preferential treatment for HIS bike. I don't want that.

Therefore I think that you should check with your principal or AD or maintenance guys and see if there is a closet in an office you could keep it. Otherwise, weigh the options of locking your bike on the rack. Would it really be that bad? Oh yeah our school has a TON of cameras, so students are kept on a short leash with hijinks (they keep getting caught. The cameras are 8 for 8 so far this year!)

No offense to school kids intended, but I would never lock my bike to the kids rack. Being a school teacher, my income to debt situation is stable but leaves little room for surprises. Even if 95% of the kids at my school are great, there is still that 5% of kids who simply haven't matured yet and still do jerky things. Even though the possibility of loss or damage to the bike is low, I still couldn't replace a stolen bike. Vandalism could be another issue. Piss off a kid on a bad day and they may go and do something to the bike, car, classroom, etc.

I will say that it is extremely rare. These types of things have only happened to me maybe once every ten years, but it is incredibly irritating. I would be very upset because events like this would discourage me from bike commuting and I don't want that to happen. It's just not worth it.

And who cares if they kids ask why the teachers get special treatment? They have such an air of entitlement now a days. Yes, teachers and students do get different treatment. They are only there for 4 years. I will be staying around for 40. I'm sorry but there is a bit of a hierarchy there whether they like it or not. Same thing applies to other parts of life. They need to learn to accept that.

I DONATED bike lockers to my employers not for profit charity division, and got to write off the lockers on my taxes. The facility engineers poured concrete pads and installed them. I use one locker, three lucky employees got one for free.

But I am quiting my job now. I made my next employer promise me an indoor, secure, non public storage area (ie: closet) as a condition for my employment. Finding a safe route to get there is my responsibility, and may actually be the hardest part.