Proper angle at which to lock one's bike to a rack

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Tricolor on July 31, 2013 at 11:33am

Something hit the front very hard.  I posted a thread on it.  It's all taken care of now, but I'm not likely to park perpendicular again.

PFEggs said:

How did this happen?  Did a car knock your rear wheel and that bent the front wheel and break the chain? 

It feels like bad luck just looking at your picture.

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Permalink Reply by JeffB on July 31, 2013 at 12:01pm

In a pinch, you can put your front wheel over the center of the rack if everyone's perpendicular.  Plus I just like perp. better because there's no tangling of handlebars, cables, and seats.  You just need to make sure there's enough room on the sidewalk to park perp. and that your wheel doesn't hang over the curb.

Skip Montanaro 12mi said:

How so?  Assuming access to the staple as okay all around, you can park two perpendicular or two parallel.

BruceBikes said:

That said, more bikes can be locked to a single rack when parked perpendicular than parallel...

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Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on July 31, 2013 at 12:21pm

This. End of story.

BruceBikes said:

The racks, as I understand it, were designed for parallel parking, so each bike has two contact/lock points.

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Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on July 31, 2013 at 12:25pm

We need to speak up for more racks, and not just make life easy for bike thieves by cutting the theft time in half.  Here's one from last night that the victim tried to jam into a full bike rack:

http://chicago.stolenbike.org/node/194372

Anne Alt said:

I see 3-4 bikes per staple rack quite often in high-demand locations like Wabash and South LaSalle.

BruceBikes said:

In a very extreme case of perpendicular parking, I've seen one bike locked to the outside of each leg, one bike locked to the inside of each leg (backed in and locked to the rear triangle), and one bike locked with the front wheel over the middle of the rack.

I regularly see three bikes locked to a rack in the Loop.

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Permalink Reply by Tony Adams on July 31, 2013 at 12:41pm

CDOT's Request a new bike rack form allows us to speak up for a rack at a particular location. Back in the day these requests were taken seriously and unless a property owner objected, a rack would get installed. In these tight budgetary times your results may vary. 

EDIT: i just confirmed that the form still works by submitting a request for a rack at Lindy's.

h' 1.0 said:

We need to speak up for more racks, and not just make life easy for bike thieves by cutting the theft time in half.  Here's one from last night that the victim tried to jam into a full bike rack:

http://chicago.stolenbike.org/node/194372

Anne Alt said:

I see 3-4 bikes per staple rack quite often in high-demand locations like Wabash and South LaSalle.

BruceBikes said:

In a very extreme case of perpendicular parking, I've seen one bike locked to the outside of each leg, one bike locked to the inside of each leg (backed in and locked to the rear triangle), and one bike locked with the front wheel over the middle of the rack.

I regularly see three bikes locked to a rack in the Loop.

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