Original, but ineffective

This compact, minimalist design can be found on the side of Corti Bros Deli and Grocery.  While I appreciate their effort to include bicycle parking at the store, this design falls short.  The loops just don't go far enough out from the wall, it is impossible to lock both the bike frame and wheel using a good-sized U-lock.

I haven't tried parking a road bike here, with the narrower, drop-bar design.  It maybe possible that a narrower bike can lock completely to this little loop.  In the meantime, a simple fix would be to attach a heavy chain or another welded loop, to give a bit more reach.

Bike Parking Success

This Utilitarian model sits at At 14th and E streets, in front of the Yoga Seed and the Shine Cafe.   It doesn't look like much, but it gets the job done.  Sacramento Area Bike Advocates rejects this model (they call it 'the comb' in their Bike Parking Guidelines) but I disagree--  I think this is a very effective model, as long as you know one simple trick.

 While the comb it falls into a trap I mentioned before: narrow bars, can't slip the front wheel in, it is easy enough to lift your bike up and over the top, allowing you to lock your wheel and frame to the rack.  It's a little inconvenient, but the result is a very secure lock and stable bike position.

A great many bicycles are able to lock up to this rack.  Though the riders choose a variety of ways to do so.  In this picture, at least two other cyclists have discovered the secret of the 'over the crossbar' method of parking.   Another two bikes lock only their wheels, and a final rider has chosen to lock to the side of the rack, as is sometimes best.

Protect Your Ride

Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates has published a series of Bicycle Theft Prevention Guidelines that  resemble the ones I posted earlier, but these are more thorough with a much more professional look.  I suggest you read both.

Another Bike Parking Failure

Cafe LeBoux, 51st and Folsom

This rack has a nice visual design, I'll give it that.  Simple, but aesthetically pleasing.  Appropriately placed in front of cafe.  However, this rack fails in the way so many racks do.  The bars are too narrowly placed, so many or most bikes are too wide at the front, and the bike fork cannot fit between the bars.   While this can sometimes be overcome by lifting your bike up and over the top of the rack, in this instance, the top is blocked by a nice little metal image of a coffee cup.  

Thus, a rack that should fit four or five bikes, can fit only two.  It seems as though the people who design and the people who purchase these racks simple aren't aware of basic bike parking fundamentals.  It's too bad, because I appreciate the consideration in including bike parking at all.  Perhaps this design can be salvaged by removing every other vertical bar.  The owners are unlikely to want to remove the very thematic coffee cup from the top.

Bike Parking in Sacramento II

Here's a great bike parking rack located right down the street from our unfortunate previous example.  On 48th st, outside East Sac Hardware, there are two of these little poles.  They aren't fancy, but they get the job done.  They were clearly designed with basic bike locking guidelines in mind.  I was able to lock my front wheel and frame, and I didn't even have to move my water bottle!  I can see that a much taller bike would still be easily accommodated.  

Bike Parking in Sacramento

Bicycle parking in Sacramento can be lackluster in many places.  On a whole, the best option is very often locking your bike to a sign post.  While some businesses have put forth an earnest effort to improve the state of their Bicycle Parking facilities, a great number of the Bike Parking choices they make are fundamentally flawed.  

The common, recurring problem with bike parking is a demonstrated lack of understanding of basic Bicycle Lock guidelines.  That is to say:  Always lock your frame up.  Best practice to lock your frame and your front wheel.  Especially if you have quick release wheels which, increasingly, bikes do.  The lock of choice is a U lock, which should be wide enough to lock your frame and your front wheel.  

Ideally, you should lock your back wheel as well, but it is impossible to do this without a long cable lock.  This is a point where a lot of people drop off:  They're down to carry one lock, but two is too cumbersome.  The back wheel is usually the one to let go because it is harder to remove given its attachment to the chain and deraileur system.  The front wheel, on the other hand, can be removed in a matter of seconds.  

Let's review:  Best lock style is a U-lock. Lock priorities:  Frame, Front Wheel, Back wheel.  Using these guidelines, I will proceed to review the different bike parking situations I find throughout town.

Very artful, but ultimately of little value.  In front of One Speed on Folsom.  

Well look here, isn't this a nifty looking bike rack?  Very nicely designed metal sculpture.  Check out the gears, and the slots down below for keeping your bike aligned?  How nice.  Except, wait a minute, see where I'm parked?  I chose to lock to the side of the rack because It was the only way I could lock both my frame and front wheel using my large U-Lock.

Following the way this rack's design suggests I should park my bike, I would only be able to lock my front wheel, leaving the rest of my bike vulnerable to the next passing bike thief, who would require only seconds to remove my front wheel and walk away with the my frame.  Then all I would have left of my bike would be another tragic wheel-locked-to-a-rack, like you see around town.

Sorry One-Speed, you get a A for artful, and a D for (bad) Design.

On Fuel Efficiency

I appreciate all the really cool 'self driving cars' and 'long chain-coupling cars' and Tesla cars and all those really cool futuristic new technologies and Hybrid Cars, and electric cars and all that crap.  But let's not kid ourselves.  These things miss the point.  If you really want to help.  If you want to reduce traffic and to reduce your carbon footprint, then:

Stop-Fucking-Driving.

We don't need a new design solution or a fantastic new technology.  What we need is to get cars off the road.

I would love to see what the fuel efficiency difference is between a Prius driven by one person and a Econoline van carrying eight people.  I bet it's pretty close and I bet the Van still wins out.  This notion that we can have our cake and eat it too, that we own the open road and cars represent freedom - these notions are helping to fuel a Global Warming lifestyle.  If we insist on avoiding one another, and isolating ourselves and not looking at our ugly neighbors on the bus, then we are just digging deeper, no matter what cutting edge and expensive technology we have.  The Prius is just working harder to preserve this Global Warming lifestyle rather than to create a sustainable alternative.

According to this government list of best and worst fuel economy cars, the best fuel economy is the Chevy Spark at 119 and the Prius scores a mere 42.  And the worst Large-sized fuel economy is Rolls Royce Phantom at 14.  Using completely made up math, if we multiply the efficiency for every person riding the car (take off 15% for added weight) then we get an efficiency of 71.4 for the Rolls Royce, easily trouncing a Prius driven by one person.  My math may be made up, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be somewhere near the mark.

Now, this doesn't reach the efficiency of the Chevy Spark, but it gets in the ballpark. And very few people can afford either of these cars, so they will have to settle for something, ironically, more or less fuel efficient.  You can organize the list by excluding electric cars, and when you do, the numbers are even closer.  As the low end and high end grow together, the carpool in a less efficient vehicle will be further and further in the lead.  I hope this illustrates that a change in behavior is more powerful and less expensive than a change in technology when it comes to fuel efficiency.


-D



Link:  http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/best-worst.shtml

Slogans I'd like to see

"Nobody Drives in New York;  There's too much traffic"  - Phillip J Fry


Hate Traffic?  

Drive Less.
Carpool.
Don't Drive at all.
Take the Bus.
Ride a Bike.
Walk.



While I love to search for design solutions to traffic problems, the biggest cause of traffic is:  Driving a car.  I took the bus across the causeway the other day, and just for fun, in the last two minutes of the drive, I started counting the cars I saw with only one occupant.  I counted twenty five- in literally two minutes.

A series of five carpools could drop that count by 80%.  One bus could drop it by 96%.  One bus can take 24 cars off the road, if each is carrying only one passenger, which it likely is.  This is just rough number-play, of course.  Chances are one bus doesn't go everywhere these people need to go, and they certainly don't have the capacity to carry 25 bicycles to help bridge that gap.  But still, with a little planning, the bus can work for anyone, which leads me to another slogan:



Hate Traffic?

Practice Patience.


This suggestion works on multiple levels.  If you are stuck in traffic, practicing patience can help you cope with it, since there's very little you can do to change things once you are stuck in gridlock.  Another way patience works is that it allows you to pursue alternate transportation options.  If you are patient, you can get where you're going without having to drive.  It may take a while longer, it may require you to be in a room with strangers, it may require you to pedal for twenty minutes in the hot sun, but it will get you there.  A little patience goes a long way.  All the tools to save money and avoid traffic are available, if you choose to use them.

And frankly, we could use major boosts in public transportation funding and bicycle friendly road design.  But you have to work with what you have.

Bicycle map of Tahoe Park, East Sac, CSUS region

I've been tinkering with Google custom maps, mostly to point out places in my neighborhood that are safe to bike and places that could use improvement.   Have a look at the following link:

http://tinyurl.com/kg96p6x

This map got the attention of the Tahoe Park Preservation Association, who will be holding a bike/walk Audit of the neighborhood on Saturday, June 28th.

Intersection murals

Portland, OR in the Hawthorne District

Downtown Davis, CA  4th and K st

From Tucson to Sacramento

A view of the beach somewhere north of Santa Barbara

One thing I can say for my current unemployment:  It has allowed me to take long trips via train.  When I am working, I have a limited number of vacation hours, and I generally find I can't afford to spend 24+ hours in transportation.  This is a shame, because I love the train.

Well, unemployment changes that.  I recently took the train from Tucson, AZ to Sacramento, CA - a distance of about 900 miles and 25 hours.  This is the second time in my adult life I took an overnight in coach-class Amtrak, the first being the Coast Starlight from Sacramento to Portland, a trip I plan on taking again in a month.  

I enjoyed my overnight on the Texas Eagle much more than my previous overnight experience.  I believe this is due in part to the time of departure, which was 8:30 pm, giving me a couple hours to acclimate to my surroundings.  But mostly I think it is due to traveling alone, and having no one in the seat next to me.  I was able to put the leg rests up and spread out pretty effectively.  I got a few solid hours of sleep, and was pretty comfortable, all things considered.  

The next day I rode the Coast Starlight from LA to Sacramento.  This line is legendary, and I was thrilled to give it a look.  I have to admit that the results were a little underwhelming.  It is lovely to look out at the beach, and equally if not more beautiful to view the rolling hills between Monterey and the SF Bay area.  I suppose I'm a little bitter that the observation car was always very full and I didn't always get a good seat.   I am not much of a photographer, though there were others taking photographs, which I will comb the internet for.  

I did have a nice dinner with some very interesting people.  I appreciated this experience.  I am not normally a social person, but everyone at the table was kind and had interesting stories to tell.  

One final bit of information is that there wasn't a WiFi connection on the Coast Starlight.  Given the 12 hour length of the Journey (plus another 1.5 hours for delay) I could really have used some Internet.  Several of the hours were after dark (though none of the coastal parts).  Having an internet connection really helps me feel at home, and the combination of the comfort of the train with access to the world wide web is a match made in heaven.  I hope this is something Amtrak can improve.  

 I would ride both of these lines again, though I admit this is due in large part to my sentimental love of the train.