flangehead

I think ILTB has a pretty good transportation rig. Fenders, good lighting, low maintenance drive train. I get a lot of utility out of zip ties and old inner tubes.

I’ve tried ALDI in three different locations. Smaller, simpler store concept should have advantages but they don’t execute well. Produce quality was not good and they didn’t have some basics I was looking for. I haven’t been back to any of them.

livedarklions

When you typed that bit about "paranoid", did it not occur to you that the likelihood of theft might be much higher in other places? I wouldn't dream of leaving a bike like that in Boston, for example.

livedarklions

It's a problem in the US when there aren't bike parking facilities like that to fill up. I've been in urban neighborhoods where all of the street signs have a bike locked to them. I would not recommend leaving your bike against a wall in that context. We don't all live in Iowa.
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Troul 

a modern CF bicycle would either become damaged or stolen if left locked up unattended in my area. Hardly any interests will be drawn to a deranged looking bicycle when left out in public...

SurferRosa

I wouldn't want to actually ride it anywhere, but ymmv. It's certainly got one thing going for it:

Daniel4

Thieves may want the bicycle for the value of the metal.

Troul 

There's a lot of labor in stripping down that bicycle to net a few bucks at best. Just tossing that bicycle as it to a recycler wouldn't get you likely half as much. A person that is "in the know" of such activity wouldn't waste there time.

Better off waiting for that CF bicycle to claim & resell to an unsuspecting buyer...

Trakhak

There are professional bike thieves in big cities and college towns in the U.S. who target expensive bikes, but the street value of almost any working bike stolen by a casual (i.e., opportunistic) thief is about $15, or was for many decades. It might be up to $25 by now. Hundred-dollar department store bike, $8,000 CF bike---doesn't matter.

I was surprised to see sneering comments about the looks of ILTB's utility bike. Yes, perhaps he should do as those commenters do and drive everywhere, reserving bike use for serious training rides. Those rides should be driven to, of course, since the roads nearer home tend to be annoyingly full of other drivers and thus unpalatable to a serious cyclist.

I-Like-To-Bike

I wasn't surprised. A&S is not free of its share of enthusiasts proud of inflated ideas about the value and contribution to society of their precious gorgeous bikes and bicycling activities; sneering and snark is to be expected from such so-called self-centered "advocates."

livedarklions

ILTB asks for those unflattering comparisons when he starts throwing around words like "paranoid" at people who don't think it's a good idea to adopt his lax security precautions. Obviously, if he is parking a relatively inexpensive bike in Burlington Iowa, it is not the same consideration one would put into locking your more expensive bike in Oakland, CA (or wherever). ILTB immediately launches into his character attacks, just casually throwing out insulting adjectives to whatever concern he doesn't happen to share.

I think you're mixing up cause and effect, btw. The reason that stolen bikes tend to be at the cheaper end of things is because there's a lot more of them, and people are probably less concerned with securing them.

livedarklions

Are you even capable of not turning everything into this sort of personal attack?

livedarklions

That doesn't make a lot of sense for a small storefront in a downtown area. A business that already has a sizeable parking lot, maybe, but the issue isn't really the rack itself, it's the piece of real estate it will have to sit on.

Places iike Sommerville, MA are converting some of the street parking to bike racks. This makes a lot of sense to me. You can fit a lot of bikes into a space that was formerly occupied by a single car.

Daniel4

Nothing unpleasant has ever happened to him on a bicycle. So nothing ever will. Or he's oblivious.

I-Like-To-Bike

The obnoxiousness is strong among some so-called bicycling advocates and may answer the question asked by the OP,
"Why isn't it required to have a "good" bike rack out in front of all businesses?"

Chuck M 

Now this is actually a pretty good idea. The downtown shopping district in my town I think would benefit from something along the lines of converting a couple of car spots each block to a bike parking area. A much better solution to every business downtown being required to have a "good" bike rack.

livedarklions

You're repeating yourself and it's a stupid assertion. Do you have anything constructive to add to this conversation?

Pretty sure most business owners haven't actually had any interactions with bicycling advocates, so-called or otherwise. I go into stores and restaurants all the time that would have no practical place to put a bike rack. "Requiring" them to do the impossible is a pretty tough policy sell.

mschwett 

hm, what kind of store or group or stores isn’t adjacent to a public way? presumably there’s a street, so there’s frontage on the street with either a sidewalk or a setback or a parking lot?

in any case - i agree that it’s bad policy to go around retroactively requiring businesses to do things. that isn’t how it’s done for zoning related issues. you require it for new construction, remodels, change of use, additions, etc. that plus the city or country doing it when they maintain roads and sidewalks would result in pretty good coverage in 10-20 years.

livedarklions

So in your typical Main St. set up, you often have small store front after store front exiting directly on the sidewalk. These sidewalks are generally (usually") not wide enough to accommodate a useable bike rack and pedestrian traffic especially while maintaining disabled people's access. There wouldn't seem to be a case for every one of those storefronts to have some sort of bike rack in front of them, and I also think that there's a whole lot of liability and construction costs that the store owner would need to incur to put up this dubious benefit. I also don't think that a lot of these store owners actually have the rights to erect structures on those sidewalks, so would they be given that automatically along with the mandate to do so?
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Already having a parking lot is a somewhat different situation--I am responding to the "all businesses" aspect of this question. .

mschwett 

hmmmm. i’m not aware of many “main street” type sidewalks in north america that are less than 8 feet wide. typically 10 to 12. otherwise even the curb ramp for a driveway cuts into the accessible path, and there’s no room for trees, utility boxes, even space to stand while you feed a parking meter. as i mentioned above the “standard” design for a relatively narrow sidewalk is a 4-5’ accessible path adjacent to property lines and doors, and then a 3-5’ band adjacent to the curb for trees, parking meters, curb ramps, and bike racks. the bikes go parallel to the accessible path, two to a fixture, fixtures spaced every 6-8’ or alternating with trees and curb ramps.

of course there are conditions where it’s narrower than that, but it’s the exception, not the rule.

i still agree with you that you can’t retroactively require everyone to do this. as to your question about construction in the public way, yes, property owners have the right and often requirement to construct improvements in the public way with the appropriate permit. virtually all cities in north america allow and require this.

livedarklions

Strikes me that the municipality would be in a better position to place things like this on the sidewalk and/or street in some sort of rational manner. Having small bike racks every 6-8 feet makes little sense to me, and actually would obstruct a portion of the sidewalk systematically to no particular good end. Divorcing this function from the individual store owners allows a more sensible approach as it lifts the necessity of putting a rack somewhere just because it happens to be in front of a storefront.

mschwett 

not sure what you’re saying here - agreed that the city can and should do them and organize them, but the best and most common practice is indeed to put them in the street furnishing zone, intermittently with trees, meters, benches, etc. they’re dirt cheap, highly visible from both the street and the interior of businesses, small, flexible, secure, etc. they don’t obstruct the sidewalk because they’re parallel to the circulation zone, in the street furnishing zone.

racks which park multiple bikes wheel in take much more space and are harder to get a secure lock to the frame.

blue192

I can think of two main reasons for this: First, the business owner leases the space and it is up to the property owner for outside improvements like bicycle parking. And second, we as bicyclists should let the business owner know that we would like to shop at their store more often but lack a proper space to park said bicycle.

retswerb

There's a time and a place for this, sure; it's excellent to communicate the request directly to the business owner when possible. At many stores, though — even small ones — the only person I interact with may be a cashier who isn't paid enough to care about the well-being of the business and won't bother to pass along the message.

livedarklions

I think we're running into a regional perspective thing here, because that diagram looks like a snow clearance nightmare to me. It kind of makes my point, though, in that the spacing of the bike racks has absolutely nothing to do with the number of and location of the individual store fronts.
Large racks can be placed in parking spots on the street, btw. This arrangement works well in the few places I've seen and used it. One car space can easily accommodate about 5 bikes.

Daniel4

Many years ago, after a long bike ride, I stopped by a Tim Horton's ( a very popular coffee shop all across Canada) for a coffee. To this day, there are no bike racks at any of their locations. So I normally lock my bike at the nearest iron fence or whatever there was. At one location it was a railing at the entrance of a retirement home.

So once I rode right into the drive-thru. None have bike racks but they all have drive-thrus. When it was my turn at the microphone, I waited for a while before I noticed that behind me was the line of cars going all the way into the street and the staff was running in and out taking their orders, not mine.

So when I walked to the window I asked what was going on and the reply was that I wasn't supposed to walk up. Well, that could have taken as much time to tell me as any other coffee order instead the management chose to waste everybody else's time. (There was an earlier occasion at a different location, I was served at the drive-thru with my bike, no problem.)

I later searched the Tim Horton's website to offer my feedback but there was none. Do I can't remember if I did or not but I think I searched the email for the HQ or CEO and requested that all Tim Horton's install bike racks because cyclists are customers too.