The Future of Bike Racks: “Crummy Poles” with Circles?

By David Xia
On paper, the city’s new bike rack design has an attractive, almost Ikea-like simplicity.  In the real world, however, the new racks look to some people like circular hunks of metal stuck onto dirty old parking meters — you know, the kind dogs fall in love with.

At Tuesday’s Community Board 7 transportation committee meeting, board members, community organizations, and cyclists raised concerns about the aesthetics, accessibility, and impact of the city’s new circular bike racks.

Monica Blum, the president of Lincoln Square’s Business Improvement District, said she wanted to see a physical example of the Department of Transportation’s racks instead of artists’ renditions. Holding up a schematic in one hand and photos of headless parking meters in the other, Blum pointed out the discrepancies between the city’s sleek rack redesign and the old parking meter poles on which they will attach them.

The DOT plans to install its new “Hoop” racks on Columbus Avenue between West 67th and 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue between West 60th and 86th Street. They adapted the winning concept of last year’s bike rack design competition to existing parking meter poles. Instead of a cast iron circle 20 inches in diameter bisected horizontally by a bar and attached to the pavement (the original proposed design), the new rack’s middle bracket is oriented vertically and bolted to parking meter shafts.

Board member Linda Alexander said she wanted an “attractive streetscape” and asked whether the new racks would hinder deliveries to store fronts.

Some people at the meeting wondered whether the DOT was trying to save money. “This is what we need to find out,” said co-chair Andrew Albert.

“They’re taking a crummy pole and sticking a circle on it,” said Blum.

The DOT representative who planned to attend the meeting was absent because of a prior commitment.

Upper West Side bicycling advocate Tila Duhaime said the lack of bicycle stands for the last two months has inconvenienced frequent cyclists like herself. She stopped at a wine shop last week but could not lock her bike onto a parking meter because it was “decapitated.”

Duhaime referred to the fact that the city has taken meters heads off their poles after installing Muni Meters, a centralized meter system that reduces the number of individual meter devices.

Co-chair Dan Zweig emphasized, however, the importance of surveying local merchants beforehand. “They don’t all like it,” he added, telling one person not to be “pollyannaish.”

Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve submitted their original hoop design to the DOT’s competition last spring. In fall 2008, the DOT chose their concept over 200 others as the city’s standard rack, and the two Copenhagen designers received $10,000. Mahaffy and De Greeve presented a modified design for DOT review in October 2009. In previous discussions about the bike racks in the transportation committee, residents praised the idea of reusing old parking meters — both for environmental and financial reasons.

After a while, some meeting participants seemed bored by the long discussion. Board member Roberta Semer pulled out her knitting needles and began to stitch a purple blanket.

Thirty-five minutes into the discussion, one board member asked, “What are we looking to get out of this discussion?” Everyone chuckled with relief.

Taking the cue, Zweig summarized that CB7 wanted at least two racks per block and would consult with the DOT once rack installation began.

“This thing didn’t turn out quite what we were expecting,” he said. (Diagrams of bike racks from city DOT)