Bike racks are good . . . if they're usable

Anybody who rides a bike knows the story. You ride a bike to a destination and find one or more bike racks that fulfill some kind of mandate or shows a good intention, but offers no real certainty that your bike is parked securely in a visible location. Everywhere in America car-parking spaces are dimensioned and arranged similarly—books are written on best practices for parking automobiles—but no similar agreed upon best practices exist for standardizing the number, form, and placement for parking bicycles. Individual cities have adopted standards that vary widely in their quality.

El Cerrito Municipal Code 19.24.090—Required bicycle parking offers hope, yet falls short in details and is all text, lacking illustrations for a subject matter that begs for illustrations. The standards in the code usually aren't invoked except for new construction; owners of existing properties and businesses have little incentive to dive into the municipal code if they are not building anything.

El Cerrito's Active Transportation Plan on pages 75-77 calls for bike racks throughout the city, but the implementation has been to place them evenly distributed along commercial environments such that they too often don't coincide with the entries to businesses; this fails the basic purpose of any kind of parking, to deliver customers to businesses.

Merchants need to be convinced that providing bike parking is a necessary part of doing business—an informational campaign is in order! A brochure could lay out the arguments, agreed upon standards, products available, how to get the racks, and how the city can help them get them installed properly. The city should also follow up with inspections to make sure the racks function as standards intend.

If you want to join an effort to help El Cerrito Strollers & Rollers promote safe and secure bicycle parking throughout the city, please send us an email: elcerritostrollroll@gmail.com




These bike racks, installed to fulfill a requirement, are not located to deliver customers to shop entrances.



Bike rack is not visible from shops and is so close to wall that a bike frame cannot be locked to it.




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