Building A Better Bike Rack

Bike racks in front of the L.A. Times Building in Downtown Los Angeles. Courtesy of Payton Chung.

Many many square miles of Los Angeles are devoted to parking and securing the private automobile.  The options read like Bubba’s shrimp recipes from Forest Gump: there’s surface parking lots, underground parking garages, multi-story parking buildings, street side parking, valet parking, and parking lifts, to name a few.  Bicyclists aren’t so lucky.  Usually they get nothing.  But that’s not to say that there isn’t a wide variety of bike racks to choose from, it’s just that if there were as many parking lots are there are bike racks, auto drivers would have little to do.

Anyhow, over at the Cool Hunting blog, there’s an article the references a design competition to build a better method of parking bicycles in New York City. Inspired by this competition, the author lists five bike racks that represent the creme de la creme of bicycle parking as it stands today.  These include: the “Arlington”; the Velib from Paris; Cyc Bicrac by Madrax; the witty car shaped rack by Adrien Rovero;  and the Horsehoe Rack by Creative Pipe.  What’s great about all these racks is that not only are they functional, they’re also aesthetically pleasing and add to the built environment in pleasant way… a stark contrast to the urban wastelands that are parking lots.