Machka 

I've seen those ... a little tricky to use, but they do look nice.

tandempower

Today someone commented that it would be problem if downtown had bikes everywhere. It got me thinking about more efficient parking methods. Twist-fold handlebars and folding pedals would go a long way toward making bikes take up less space alongside buildings, walls, fences, etc.

Are there other innovations or parking-systems that would make bike-parking more space-efficient? Should I start a different thread on this topic or is this a good thread to bring it up?

Rob_E

I think you'll have an uphill battle if your goal is to encourage people to buy more "parking friendly" bikes. I don't know where you're located or if this is a real concern or just somebody's crazy, "what if" scenario, but it seems like if a real problem starts to crop up, the solution has to be better bike parking, not more parking-efficient bikes. Bikes are already pretty efficient compared to a car. You can park them all kinds of places a car can't get to.

A couple of years ago they put a "bike corral" downtown. Basically they took one, on-street car spot, and turned it into parking for up to a dozen bikes. Multi-Modal in Raleigh: NC's Gets it's First (real) Bike Corral

I've seen more extreme solutions. Isn't in Japan where someone has an automated bike parking garage? Maybe someone has the link. I feel like the answer has to simply be more bike parking. I feel like cities around here are coming to terms with the fact that as the city grows, dealing with all the automobiles and where to put them becomes a major headache. If you told them you could help the situation by putting in some better bike parking, and that then fewer people would bring their cars downtown, I think they would jump at the chance.

CliffordK

Maybe take one car parking spot, and put a rack to hold 10 bicycles.

It may take some strength and organization to hang bikes. Security? But, one could pack them in pretty tight if one hung the bikes by the front wheel, or alternated front & rear wheels.

tandempower

I did a search for folding handlebars and found nothing like what I imagined. I figured there would be some handlebars that fold down to the stem the way some adjust back and forth for different riders.

It took me very little effort to think up a quick-release mechanism that would let you release the handlebar from the stem and turn it sideways so that your front wheel could be put flush up against a wall.

At that point, the only thing keeping the bike from leaning flat against the wall is the pedals. My folding bike has folding pedals so those already exist.

If bikes can be parked flush up against walls, businesses could offer additional bike parking just by having hook-loops for you to strap your bike up against the wall. I would use my cable lock so I wouldn't have to carry an extra bungee strap.

I don't make such a big deal about it. I just try to think of potential innovations that could raise the level of efficiency. Maybe there aren't enough bikes yet to matter, but if someone voices a concern about too many bikes, why not pre-empt the problem by developing a solution that allows more bikes to park using less space?

That's a good idea. How would you lock the frame to the rack, though?

travelinhobo

Ooh, I like that idea of fold-up/down pedals. It must be doable if they could do that with side mirrors on cars!
I'm surprised more people haven't posted pics of bike racks here. I just did a nice tour of southern California. Being bike friendly, I came upon many different kinds of racks. This one in Huntington Beach is my favorite, I think.

Okay, well, this system is extremely difficult to figure out how to upload a pic, so just know that those surfboard bike racks are great!

tandempower

I think they're common on folding bikes. I have a basic folding bike with plastic folding pedals. Here's a pic I found on the internet:

Here's also a pic I found for folding handlebars, though they don't have brakes/cables/shifters and it's unclear whether they're actual production handlebars or just a rendering.

It's from a website that also shows how many bikes can be parked (or carried on the back of a bus) using this design:


source: https://mattcardinal.com/front-page/p...ransportation/

Roody

Even better would be hanging the bike off the side of the bus, so riders don't slow down the loading/unloading of the bus quite so much.

Also, it can feel a little risky to stand in front of a bus with a hurried driver in order to hang your bike, or risk the bus driving off before you have a chance to retrieve the bike.

Walter S

Have you thought about what that would do to the width of the bus as it goes down the road?

tandempower

Walter S is right about the width. The picture shows buses hanging on the back, not the front, of the bus.

Drivers shouldn't be hurried with bike-passengers any more than they should be hurried with wheelchair passengers who require ramp-service and securement of their chair into place. Buses exist to serve pedestrians. Yes, they need to maintain a schedule so they are hurried in that regard, but it would defeat the purpose to drive off before the passenger can secure a bike and board the bus.

CliffordK

I found this one in Portland.

I like the roof over it. I didn't try to pull up the frames. Hopefully they're embedded in concrete, or are all welded together.



Unfortunately, the sign in the background was a bit ominous.

Allez3

If we parked bikes around here like the top picture, we'd come out to find the bottom picture. Must have been nice.

Walter S

At least there's a sign. I wouldn't stop at all myself. Is that what Portland is like?

CliffordK

Portland, like many cities, have good and bad neighborhoods.

I commuted on the old Colnago Super for several years up there, and nobody touched it.

There are a few different bike theft maps, but this one is representative, I think.



One has West of the Willamette River which is generally affluent. East of the river has some higher crime neighborhoods.

The big hotspot west of the river is downtown, which has a LOT of people, and a lot of commuters. I think it is improving now, but the downtown area is also somewhat mixed in high-end and low-end areas.

Anyway, the photo was near the Bike Co-op, in the big red stripe just south of Burnside on the East side.

I wouldn't lock a $1000 bike out of eyesight in that area, and when I stopped at the co-op, the Colnago came inside with me.

Other neighborhoods, one might even be able to leave a nice bike unlocked on the front porch (at least for a while).

tandempower

This rising cost of bikes is a good reason to expand bike share for around-town commuting. Single-speed bikes like the yellow ones with folding handlebars and pedals pictured in my posts above would also be easy to stack horizontally in racks as docking stations. Then, since it's a bike share, you just pull the first bike off the rack and ride it, instead of having to pull all the bikes off to get to your own, and then put the others back.

Riding a bike-share bike could be like pulling a shopping-cart out of a stack at the supermarket. It's nice to have your own bike for long rides and touring, but why not just have bike-shares for around-town commuting?

Machka 

Bike parking plans in our city ...

Park My Bike - Bicycle Network Tasmania

cooker

Some photos of crowded bike parking in Amsterdam, etc. make it look scary, but you only have to stop for a moment and contrast it with the massive horizontal and vertical parking facilities occupied by cars, and you realize the space taken up by bikes is miniscule in comparison. If 10% of car parking space was converted to bike parking space, you could get more people downtown and and make it less congested at the same time.


Columbus, 2010:

Loose Chain

Does the theft rate reflect a greater population of bikes or a different populace?

One of if not the greatest deterrents to widespread use of bicycles to augment or replace fuel powered transport is the nonchalance that bicycle theft is provided. Bicycle theft is no more taken seriously than is using "toys" for transport. As long as that attitude persists transport via bicycle will remain fringe.

CliffordK

One thing about cyclists. They don't mind riding an hour across town, but want to park their bike 10 feet from the door of whatever establishment they're going into.

But, yes, you could easily get 10 bikes crammed into the space it takes to park 1 car, if done efficiently.

Congestion? Mixed modal roads are complex. One would almost have to rid the roads of all non-commercial vehicles to truly have an impact. Bikes take up less space than cars on the road, but also spend more time on the road for the same distance (but perhaps typically travel for shorter distances). So, slower speeds might increase congestion if bikes replaced cars.

CliffordK

Both

I'm not a native Portlander so I have to go on general characteristics of the map. The map does exclude some of the big suburbs that are other cities that have merged with Portland.

Most of the big red hotspots appear to be around major commercial districts. The large red spot just west of the river is downtown Portland where all the highrise buildings are, although even that varies, with most of the highrise buildings south of Burnside, and more mixed wealth north of Burnside (is that changing?). Both parts of downtown are marked "well above average".

Much of the white area in West Portland is residential, although there are some commercial areas that apparently didn't make he cut.

East Portland has some large commercial areas too, many of which have red spots, but quite a few more yellow (average) areas too, which West Portland doesn't have. In the East, between I-205 and the river there are some good neighborhoods, and some impoverished neighborhoods.

The East is also a lot flatter than the West. So perhaps lower incomes and flatter land would mean more bicycles, as well as more desperate low income people.

I'd have to look at schools. PSU is also included in the downtown hotspot. OHSU is in a white area but serves a much different student body, and is on a big hill. I think Portland Community College is also marked white. Reed College appears red.

Anyway, more commercial means more bikes locked outside, and visible.
More residential means crimes are either opportunistic (bikes left on the porch), or the theft is burglary from inside the house which steps up the game a bit.

CliffordK

Most successful bike commuters adapt to the possibility of theft. My last stolen bike was in High School when I dropped the key next to the bicycle. I've used U-Locks off and on. I carefully consider daytime vs nighttime theft potential and factor that into my security plan.

Car drivers have key ignition and lock their cars.

Perhaps one could look at secured bike parking as a business opportunity.

If a parking pass is say $100 a month. How much would secure bike parking be worth? $20 a month? Anybody willing to spend over $200 a year for dry secure bike parking? It would still save over car parking. That much to park a $200 bike?

Roody

I would pay no more than $10/month. That seems fair, since it's easy to park 10 bikes in the space for one car. Also, the lot owner assumes much less liability for parking bikes instead of cars.

Loose Chain

I have had two bicycles stolen and I have not adapted to it at all.

tandempower

It's not scary, but it is hard to find your bike if you don't memorize where you parked it somehow. It's much like trying to find a car parked at Disney World if you don't remember that you are parked in the Mickey section in row F5.

Another problem with bike parking is getting your bike in and out of the 'pile.' This is where folding-handlebar bike-share bikes would come in handy because you could just fold the handlebars and pedals of your bike and stack it horizontally in the stack with bikes in your size. Then, whenever you grab a new bike, you just grab the first one in the appropriate stack. It would be more like grabbing the first shopping cart from a horizontal stack of those, as we already do in supermarkets all the time.

Parking in the shade protects your tires and paint from baking in the sun. I know drivers who also try to park in the shade whenever possible. It just so happens that there's plenty of room in the shade of the building you're going in so why not park there instead of far away in the sun?

The cheapest and most efficient way to reforest cities would be to smash up the pavement in the inner half of the outer lane in multilane roads. Once fragmented, plants and trees would begin growing in the cracks in the pavement and a green strip would evolve separating the outer bike lane from the inner motor-vehicle lanes.

New roads through forested areas should curve around established trees. If these roads are designed for slow traffic (20mph or less), they can curve more than if they have to be curved more gradually and banked more for faster driving.

Congestion will grow if roads are narrowed in this way, so the trick would be to begin narrowing roads and issuing rush-hour permits to promote alternatives to driving. On routes where congestion was stubborn, you would do research to analyze the traffic to determine what the cause of it is and how it could be further reduced. Currently, the biggest obstacle is a public attitude of resistance to being 'forced out of their cars.' In other words, most people aren't trying to maximize their use of alternative modes; they're just being stubborn instead (and celebrating their stubbornness in the name of freedom, which is a disgrace to the concept of a republic, btw).

Bike shares would solve the theft problem, but they bring the problem of who takes responsibility for maintaining and fixing all the shared bikes.

Rollfast

Locked up at my house.