Jos Sluijsmans runs the Dutch website Fietsdiensten.nl and is one of the organizers of the African Bicycle Design Contest, which I mentioned in a past post. He recently created a YouTube video titled ‘Creatief fietsparkeren’, which features some great examples of creative bicycle racks and parking designs from the Netherlands and around the world.
I had seen many of the designs featured, but a few of them were new to me. The wall mounted Wheelylift system was one that caught my attention in the video. I have no problem storing my lightweight bikes on the wall, but this seems like a good solution for heavy utility oriented designs. As Jos points out, the Wheelylift racks “can lift bikes up to 35 kg. So they are also very handy for twowheel cargobikes or tandems.”
Other parking solutions featured in the video include:
- Freestanding designs like Bike Tree and CyclePod.
- A bike rack with an integrated pump by Heklucht.
- An inverted-U design from Pedaal Punt that holds the bike by a pedal
- A few of the New York bike racks created by David Byrne in conjunction with New York art gallery PaceWildenstein.
- The Potato Masher bike rack from Colorado
- Various types of racks from companies like Klaver Group, Veksoe, and Cabanes
All in all, the video covers some unique approaches to bike parking and storage. In addition to these, and the ones I have mentioned in the past, can you think of other interesting designs that are worth a mention?
That Caltrain Palo Alto mockup at 1:45 in the video is the Bike Arc designed by local bike guy Jeff Selzer and architect Joseph Bellomo.
The video didn’t show any of the covered bike storage facilities that are fairly common in California – I’m talking about the metal box bike lockers and the flip top Bike Lids.
Another interesting bike rack I see in California is the U Lok from Sunshine U Lock. You secure the bike downtube in the slot: the cyclist is expected to use a cable to secure the wheels. This is an old design that’s considered obsolete now, but then I didn’t see a way to secure bikes on the lever wall rack either.
http://www.cycloc.com/ By Andrew Lang very simple, and innovative – looks good in living space + bike of your choice.
The dutch and bikes are like two peas in a pod. Not surprised that the dutch blogger found all these innovative ideas.
The metal bike lockers that Richard refers to were profiled in a Streetfilms video:
http://www.streetfilms.org/secure-bike-parking-just-cents-per-hour/