October 11, 2008
Astor Place Bike Rack Prototype Broken!
It's been a week and a half since the bike rack prototypes have been unveiled and already one of the models is broken! Reader Mick sent in a photograph (above, on the right) of the "cable rack" style prototype looking pretty unsecured.
Designer Next Phase Studios describes the Cable Rack as "a grand cable lock click into its Anchors on the street, rather than 'stiff' street furniture like other racks." However, some bicyclists expressed concern over the flexible form and one commented on the broken rack yesterday:
So I went to see this bike rack at Astor place today and it’s already broken. One of the ends popped out of the mount and the cable is sticking in the air. Aside from that, this is not a very good concept for a bike rack. You can’t even lean your bike on this thing. I’m paranoid about my bike getting knocked over and run over by a car when it’s tied to a signpost, and this design seems to be worse than a signpost. I appreciate the wit involved with it looking like a cable lock except that cable locks are not good locks. If it’s meant to be ironic, then it should be especially sturdy, but it’s not. If it’s a prank, then good prank.The Department of Transportation's bike rack design competition has nine other finalists.
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Still nothing about Bloomberg's subversive activity to change term limits?
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Does anyone know when Shake Shack closing for the winter?
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whoa. I locked my bike to that thing 2 weeks ago. scary.
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How hard can it be to design something you chain your bike to? Stop trying to be so artsy-fartsy about it.
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ha "photograph taken today" -- you realize that will only work for today right? hahaha
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A pipe popped out of a socket. Wow.
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The Shake Shack is open year 'round.
There have been several posts on Gothamist about Bloomberg wanting a third term.
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@ides
Art & utility is what I'm hoping for in NYC. You can keep the blandness :P
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SchWINGGGGGGGG!
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Bike racks don't need good looks they need armed guards...
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Now this is fucking news.
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Not surprising. I was by there the night before the press conference and people were riding it like a mechanical bull.
So does breaking automatically disqualify this design?
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They shoulldn't have used a pool noodle to make a bike rack. At least now it can be used to poke people in the eye.
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"ha "photograph taken today" -- you realize that will only work for today right? hahaha"
You realize that the post is dated, right? hahaha...
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LOL, perfect for NYC. All show and not functional at all. A PERFECT match for a city that is only concerned with appearances and could not care a lick about functionality. No wonder this neo-lib city is so Obama happy!
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Who was the designer of this great concept? Shouldn't that be mentioned? Has the fool ever considered using a weld to join part A to part B? If the designer was talented he could have inserted a rigid metal tube inside a flexible tube and bent it to resemble a flexible bike lock. This is why the city should get out of developing designs that are not fully thought out without knowing what they are looking at. Politicians are not designers, they are politicians who mostly don't have a clue about how things work. Kind of like architects that don't know concrete from plywood.
I wont even talk about all the assholes down at city planning that review the big projects. I guess the "C" students need jobs. That's the only excuse I can find regarding their hiring requirements.
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As someone who has had to design a bike rack before there are a lot of things to consider. Its hard to design a one-size fits all solution for something that is supposed to accomodate bikes of all shapes and sizes, not to mention one that allows a person to lock at least one wheel and the bike chasis. Of course that is really only just the start. Since street space is allocated primarily to vehicles and pedestrians, bike parking is seen by most people as an impingment on their ability to circulate freely on the sidewalk. Therefore if the profile of the rack is too big people complain (pedestrians) and if the profile is too small, or -- in the case of the cable rack -- unsubstatial people complain (bicyclists).
As an avid city biker myself, I think an elegant solution (and one that implicitly makes a statement about the ped/bike/cars hierarchy) is to take vehicular parking spaces (as they did in Williamsburgh) and to re-allocate it to bicycle parking.
As for "artsy fartsy", i suppose that is a question about asthetics. Some people think that you can merge public art and transportation infrastructure (see Art in the Anchorage, Waterfalls under Brooklyn Bridge, The Birdsnest, etc...). Why should be bike rack, a "simple" piece of metal, deserve any less attention than a parking deck (which are designed to incredible specifications) and why shouldn't it make some statement that reminds both the people who ride bike and the people who don't that the bike has a rightful place in the hierarchy of the street.
Finally (and just to say it). I do agree that the cable lock has some ..um...kinks to work out.