Bike Racks: Whatcom CC - Heiner Center

Back to my favorite topic -- bike racks!
The Heiner Center building at Whatcom Community College is home to the campus library as well as the main student computer lab, several classrooms, and a theater. It gets a lot of foot traffic. But the bike racks just aren't utilized that much.

Bike Racks: Post Office on Prospect

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The US Post Office on Prospect St. has a bike rack. It's a double-sided wheel bender. Designed to park 6 bikes. Max. capacity for U-locks is 2.

Good points: it's covered, and it's set perpendicular to the wall so it can be used from two sides.

*Sigh*

Lock one wheel, or your frame. Which do you value more?

Bike To Shop Event, May 20

In addition to the 14th annual Bike to Work and School Day, Friday May 20 will also be Bike to Shop day in Bellingham, thanks to the great work of Whatcom Smart Trips, everybodyBIKE, and lots of volunteers and donations.

It's a pretty good tie-in, since quite a few of the 22 Celebration Stations (PDF map) in town are located at or near grocery stores: Sehome Village, the Public Market on Cornwall, Haggen on Meridian, Haggen at Barkley, Community Food Co-op at Cordata, and near The Market at Fairhaven. If you're biking past a grocery store on your commute, then you could pretty easily stop for groceries, too!

Bike to Shop day has three locations this year:

The Market at Fairhaven

3125 Old Fairhaven Parkway, Bellingham

(at the I-5 exit for Fairhaven Parkway)

Terra Organica

1530 Cornwall Avenue, Bellingham

(at the corner of Cornwall and Flora)

Haggen Food and Pharmacy

2814 Guide Meridian Street, Bellingham

(at the corner of Illinois and Meridian)

The 'event' part of it is that a Celebration Station will be in front of each store from 10 am to 5 pm (the other Celebration Stations are scheduled for 6:30 - 9:30 am).

In preparation for this event, I decided to take a look at each store's bike parking facilities. See what I found on my ride after the jump.

Bike Racks vs Gardening

As much as I enjoy biking; as much as I enjoy encouraging others to bike; still I appreciate getting a bit of encouragement back. A "Way-to-go, thanks for taking the effort," now & then. Most of the time I take this encouragement in the form of convenient places to park. When I visit a place that has a nice bike rack in a great location, it makes me feel like this place is looking out for me, and is happy I'm there. That sort of encouragement helps me keep going.
So what message am I supposed to take from this?

The only bike back at Rite-Aid on Northwest, completely surrounded 

But hey, at least it's not as bad as it was the day before. I didn't have my camera with me, but I saw as I cycled by that the entire rack was filled with potted. Exactly zero bikes had room to park. Message: potted plants are more important than cyclists to this establishment.

Or how about this nice bike rack at a local grocery store?

Uhh -- bike rack? Are you there?

Oh, there you are...

For much of the year the Community Food Co-op on Forest has their best bike racks right there. They're easy to access, easy to use with u-locks, covered, and of all their racks this is the one closest to the front door.
But come gardening season they remove the racks and replace them with bags of potting soil, compost, and manure. It would be tempting to say that the message is that bikes rate lower than dirt, but I know it's not the case. They do have other racks, even if those aren't as good as the ones they put out and take away on a seasonal basis.

So please tell me -- am I being unreasonable to think that bike racks, especially the only or the best rack at a business, should remain unobstructed (and physically present) ALL the time, not just sometimes? And what message does it send you to find a business that does otherwise?

Bike Racks: Rite Aid on Northwest

Rite Aid on Northwest Ave., across from the Birchwood shopping center, has a bike rack. Which is being generous.


I hate this kind of rack.
I hate how they placed it.
I hate how they treat it.

It's the "Bike rack? Yeah, I gotcher bike rack right here, buddy, and whaddaya gonna do about it? Now park it up and get inside" of bike racks. It's about doing the absolute minimum and nothing more. It's about asking, "What's the very least we can get away with? Yeah, how 'bout that one."

The City of Toronto calls this type of rack a ‘wheelbender’. It’s not a kind name. They mean it be pejorative. You’re supposed to stick one wheel in-between the narrowly-placed bars, magically have it hold your bike upright, and then run a cable or chain through the bars and your bike parts.

Insufficient Support Leads to Bent Wheels

I’m sure this works for some bikes and some locks. If you have a 10-speed with no fenders, one of your wheels will probably fit. Big knobby tires? No dice. Fenders? Ha! U-lock instead of a cable? Sure, if you don’t mind locking only one wheel to the rack.

The ‘bender’ comes in when your bike falls over. If you park head-in, the gripped wheel is in front of the pivot-point of your headset. If something should bump the rear of your bike, like, say another person tries to park their bike, your bike will probably fall over since the frame isn’t supported. That will torque the front wheel, and often cause it to warp. Have fun walking home!

And let’s talk about rack placement. Even noting that I hate this type of rack, when placed far enough away from obstructions, it can be used from both sides, which can increase parking capacity. They’ve placed it about 4 inches from a wall. There’s barely enough room to pull a bike into it, and of course hardly any bikes can fit on it from a single side. This particular one is designed to fit five bikes.

And they treat it like an obstacle. Note the plant racks pushed up against the right side, and almost up against the left side. It really looks like it’s in their way. Boy, this bike rack sure is an inconvenience!

In order to lock my bike to this kind of rack with my u-lock I have to nestle up to one side and lock to the support tube. I have a really long u-lock, but it’s not long enough to use when the bike is parked with a wheel in the wheelbender's grasp. Regardless how big this kind of rack is -- and there are really long versions of it, designed to grip up to twenty wheels -- there are only two support tubes that I can use with my lock. One on each end. Maximum capacity: two.

When I visited, there was only one spot I could park, because of the plant racks. 

Other notes:

• It’s not sheltered from weather.
• The area is well-lit and has good visibility.
• There’s one curb cut not too far away so it is possible to ride up onto the sidewalk without having to pop a wheelie.
• The rack is reasonably close to the doors.

Even though there are some positives about the general situation, this rack rates a strong BAD. I’m going to ask that they consider replacing the rack with one that’s more conducive to using a u-lock, and place it further from the wall. 

With all of the talk about adding bike lanes to Northwest Ave., businesses along the street should be thinking about how to attract some of the new riders that will soon be pedaling past. Improving their bike parking situation would go a long way toward communicating the message that customers are welcome when they arrive by bike.