Treasure Island bike rack contest submission: Re-purposed parking meters
I just submitted the above 3-D rendering to the Treasure Island Bike Rack Design contest. This concept is based on re-purposing old car parking meters to be used for bike parking.
This idea is particularly relevant to Treasure Island due to the redevelopment plan’s focus on sustainability, car independence, and pedestrian access. The out-of-context use of parking meters (i.e. in parks, on pedestrian walkways) serves as a constant reminder to Treasure Island’s residents and guests that we, as a society, need to get over our addiction to the automobile - and that biking is a viable option for transportation that is healthier and more environmentally conscious. Re-using our car parking infrastructure for bike parking makes an elegant statement about not only this shift in mindset about our mobility, but also about the potential to creatively re-use our waste.
As a San Franciscan who bikes everywhere, parking meters are already my preferred bike rack. I get frustrated with over-engineered bike parking solutions (i.e. the bike racks at GG Park’s Botanical Gardens and at the Legion of Honor) - so, with this contest, I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel too much. My original idea was simply to create a grid of parking meters. However, this does not meet the contest’s requirement of being able to secure bikes using all types of locks. If someone only had a loose cable lock, the bike could slip over the top of the meter.
I ended up with two complementary no-nonsense designs, both based on old parking meters and both designed to be functional/durable in demanding urban environments. The first is simply welding, or otherwise fastening, a cross-bar between two old parking meters to create a variation on the popular and functional U-rack design. This design allows both wheels to be securely locked to the rack. The second design is to fasten a closed metal loop to the parking meter pole, which allows a cable lock to be threaded through. While this design does not allow both wheels to be fastened directly to the rack (as the contest rules stipulate), most bikers don’t lock their bikes this way currently. From my observation, it’s more common to lock both wheels by running a cable through the front wheel and securing that cable with a single U-lock fastened to the frame/back wheel. These single meter/racks have a smaller footprint and could more easily stand-alone at various places throughout the island.
The 3-D rendering was created with Google Sketch-Up. The quality of this rendering was limited both by my novice Sketch-Up skills (first ever!) and my computer’s processing power - but I think it conveys the idea pretty well.
(Or, referencing the top-notch Treasure Island music festival, they could go with David Byrne’s sweet bike rack designs for NYC: http://www.davidbyrne.com/art/bike_racks/index.php)