Montreal has been investing a lot in its cycling infrastructure, especially in terms of bike parking: thousands of new spots will be added across the city this summer. That’s a relief, because we’ve long been stuck with these frustrating and ineffective racks, which date back to the 1990s. Each one holds up to six bikes, but they’re hard to deal with, easily damaged and take up a lot of space. They’re also hideous.
Instead of having one of these on each block, I wish Montreal would install post-and-ring racks like the ones in Toronto. They’re simple, easy to use and hugely popular; it’s inspiring to walk down a street like College or Queen West and see so many bikes. As Matt Blackett writes on our sister blog, Toronto will soon be getting new street furniture, designed by Astral Media. I find most of it to be awfully bland but I’m glad to see that the post-and-ring bike stands have been retained.
Of course, we don’t necessarily need to ape Toronto — we can steal ideas from Vancouver, which has a variety of attractive and efficient bike racks, many of which were paid for by property developers. We could take a cue from Copenhagen the Netherlands, one of the word’s bike capitals, where some racks are equipped with air pumps.
What we really need, however, is a diversity of bike racks adapted to a variety of different street environments. Things are slowly improving with the introduction of some nice on-street bike stands in Ville-Marie and the Plateau as well as the new rings installed on parking posts around the city (they open up many more spots to anyone without a u-lock) but we need more.
8 comments
Overall the bike-post situation here is just terrible. I don’t understand why any parking-spot-ID-post-thing goes up without a ring to lock bikes to. I’ve noticed in front of Casa del Popolo, where there is a constant demand for places to lock up, they put up a number of these posts with no ring. It makes no sense.
And that’s not even to say those rings are superfantastic. I find them almost too high to lock to. Despite the structural problems with the Toronto post-and-rings (they can be popped apart with a 2×4, though the city has been one-by-one reinforcing them) they are indeed easy to lock to for any size of bike and lock.
Oddly, I DID notice just yesterday that the parking-spot-ID-post-things on the south side of Bernard across from Cafe Souvenir have those very rings. But most don’t, right?
Thanks for the link, Christopher. We’ve been passionate about our somewhat lame bike rack situation in Seattle. Though we’ve had good luck in getting the city to install racks where we ask for them, they are unmistakably ugly!
One of our artsy neighborhoods has a site-specific rack design contest running – I can’t wait to see what develops!
Problem with these racks is they work really bad with fenders (especially the back ones) and the luggage rack. On my bike, I can’t attach the frame if I put the front wheel in (!) and if I try to put the back wheel in, it won’t fit because of the rack… So I always end up locking on the sides. That is, if someone hasn’t already had the same great idea.
They should get “bike docks” instead (very large inverted U design). Like these or these.
Anyone trying to get poutine at La Banquise on a friday night knows how we need more places to lock our bikes to! ;)
The parking posts that don’t have rings on them is because locking bikes to these particular posts would block the doorways of stores and homes. Not that cyclists in this city would have any awareness whatsoever towards the concept of courtesy and civility! Look in the mirror folks – many of you are the problem!
Now it’s the city’s turn, ok you big town you, now that the renovation on boulevard St-Laurent is completed (8 months ago!), it is time to get moving on bike racks and parking posts on St-Laurent. Do it this week!
One grocery store near me, went from having no parking, to having lots of wonderful bike parking, when the renovated last year, they replaced their cart coral which was just a bunch of posts in concrete to an inverted U design, now you just pull up, lock on, and your all set. The bikes I have seen there, have so far, stayed towards the ends, so they are not blocking the way, but if they get many more bikes, then it could be an issue.
An ugly rack is better then no rack, the best time to install racks (either ugly or not), is also the best time to install bike lanes, when the street is being built or refurbished (new curbs and repaving). Really, and Toronto is just as bad for this, the standard operating procedure, should be to install a bike lane on any street or section of street being refurbished, along with bike parking, how about one post and ring at least in front of every address.
The racks with pumps are in Holland, not Denmark:
http://www.copenhagenize.com/2008/01/bike-racks-next-generation.html
The post and ring design is terrible. It is relatively easy to undo the bolts and once loosened you can literally undo them with your fingers. This is a common ploy of bike thieves. An unsuspecting person locks their bike to one of these loosened rings and then the bike thief walks up, undoes it, and walks away with your bike.