Confederacy of a Dunce - Bike parking facilities

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

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I will soon be moving into a new office, moving from a nasty concrete monstrosity into a lovely Georgian building that is being remodeled to house a research centre. In theory, there will be a substantial improvement as there is a dedicated area for bicycle parking, surely an improvement over my present situation: a choice between crowding my bike into my tiny office:

or locking it to the Bike-Thief Buffet outside the building (not just bike thieves, but also vandals and the low sort of saboteurs who will stoop to removing quick-release skewers from the wheels of properly locked bikes):

The new building, instead, has two old wine cellars that extend from a basement courtyard under the pavement (sidewalk), and the centre director has wisely reserved these spaces for bicycle parking. However, the proposed parking solution fell somewhat short, and in a meeting yesterday I volunteered to make suggestions for improvements that would actually suit cyclists. The arrangement looks somewhat like this:

The solid rectangle (above) depicts the courtyard area, viewed from above. A gate at street level leads down the stairs into the courtyard. The wine cellar/bicycle parking areas are about 3m deep, but only about 2m wide. They are currently empty, and are "secured" by fairly solid wire/metal doors. The only light is a fixture in the courtyard. The idea, I suppose, is that cyclists can park in the cellars and secure their bikes by keeping the door locked. This is a good start, but doesn't protect against internal theft (another person with access to the bike areas decides to have a bike upgrade), or external theft (someone breaks the combination lock and walks off with whatever they like), mainly because there is nothing to secure a bike to. There's also nothing to lean a bike on, except for the early risers who can lean their bikes against the walls.

One possibility is that I should just avoid parking in the insecure area, and just bring my filthy commuting bike into my new office. The new office with brand-new carpet and fresh paint, that is, which is four floors up by stairs (again, newly carpeted and freshly painted). On the other hand, how can I be evangelistic about cycle commuting if I practice a parking regimen that only a lunatic and/or martyr would consider? So more practical solutions are in order.

Obviously the first step is to install some kind of rack or fixture to which bikes can be locked. Any such fixture must allow the frame of the bike to be locked to it; there is a remarkable range of wheel-only bike racks which are useless from a security standpoint. Perhaps most ideal would be a row of Sheffield stands so that each bike could be secured to a stand, parked in a row facing the back of the cellar. But the building is listed and it's unclear whether any sort of drilling/mounting solution would be permitted. It's also unclear (to me) what the ideal spacing between stands would be. Another possibility would be a stand-alone bike rack such as a traditional single-face bike rack. Anyone who could carry such a rack out of the space, with bicycles attached, could probably not be stopped by any means. It seems difficult, however, to find such a rack of suitable dimensions (most seem to be 10' long or longer). In addition, it's necessary to have some lighting installed in the cellars, and to ensure that their doors are locked with quality locks. Combinations have a way of circulating, but this problem is minimized if bikes are also locked to a fixture inside.

So that's bike storage sorted (hopefully). If only the facilities for cyclists themselves were better. The building has a bathroom on the top floor. Which would be really nice as filthy cyclists arriving at work could get cleaned up first. Except that there's no shower, only a bathtub. I'm not so sure about a leisurely soak in the tub at work.

bike

Wednesday, January 18, 2006 12:21:39 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)