spokesNspin

One of the advantages to using a bicycle to get around is parking. It  is generally easy to find a place to park. Many places have bike racks. But sometimes bike racks aren’t all that great.

Check this bike parking out:

The very nice thing is that it is roomy and in a covered garage.  Now for  the bad news.  Notice how people have parked with the bikes running parallel to the racks instead of using the racks the way they were intended. 

One bike takes the space of four bikes.  But in this good designed but poorly placed rack there isn’t much choice.  The rack is set so close to the wall that you can’t park your bike the way it is intended to be parked.

What is even more interesting is that on the day I took this picture I ran into this same situation at two different places on the same day.

The other annoyance is people parking scooters at these bike racks.  I had a scooter and never used bicycle racks.  Again they take up the same space as about three bicycles.

When there is no official bicycle parking it is generally pretty easy to find a place to lock your bike for short errands.  Like next to a sign post. 

I did this a few weeks ago and came back to find a letter on my bike telling me it wasn’t allowed.  If they didn’t allow bikes to park there why don’t they put a sign up?  Of course they had tons of car parking.

What I really find ironic is when I go to a bicycle shop and they don’t have a bicycle rack.