Originally Posted by
livedarklions
My observations are that a fairly large number of the people who work in such places ride their bikes to work if they have a place to put them. From what I've seen in New England, there are almost never any bike racks at a Walmart location regardless of whether they're located where people actually ride. I don't know if there's an area inside where the workers can secure their bikes, however.
The lack of bike racks is such an obvious pattern here that I suspect they actually want to discourage bicyclists from riding through their parking lot, possibly for liability reasons.
You could very well be right, on all accounts. I live in a bit of bubble being in a small town. But for the stuff they built up on the state route, there isn't anyplace you can't go by walking or riding a bike, but people don't. Heck, here in town you don't even have to lock a bike. In larger cities/areas where a car is darn near a liability when you have to put it someplace, I can see some folks opting to ride a bike. Back when I worked up in Dayton I was on the local advocacy committee as well as the board of the League of American Wheelmen. We were instrumental in getting bike lockers placed around the downtown area for people to use when they commuted by bike (they locked and you took the key with you). They sat empty except for the homeless people who camped in them at night.
A survey we put out to the local cycling community/downtown workers indicated people weren't motivated to brave riding in dense traffic because of a nice place to park their bikes. Believe it or not, the survey indicated they would more likely be willing to commute if they had a place to shower/freshen up. Somewhere to put the bike came in dead last.
As I said, I live in a small town and Dayton at the time was 190,000 people at best so I don't know that it's a fair comparison to real urban areas. Around here, everyone knows me and why I ride a bike; anyone else riding a bike for transportation is assumed to be on a DUI suspension, a criminal or indigent. Sad to say, but it's the truth.