The key thing is that the Rhino Liner (which is exactly what it is with its attendant rugged, highly robust specs) has a small but important amount of “give” that really limits scratching on both the bike and the rack. With bikes easily costing well north of a grand you really want to make every effort to ensure a cyclist is happy using the rack.

As regards the locations, I don’t deny at all that some of our locations are less than ideal or perhaps “overbuilt” at this point in time before more bike trails and mass transit options are built out. Indeed, right now some of the locations are more effective for district branding and public awareness of cycling – which were always also goals of our project.

I will say though that it was a hell of a struggle to find locations in eastern downtown that met all the location parameters we had to deal with – more details about all this are at http://www.urbanneighbors.org/Websites/urbanneighbors/Images/RackUp_Downtown_ACOG_Presentation_6-18-2008.pdf.

Finally, Project 180 is going to be an excellent opportunity to install racks in ideal locations from the get go, rather than trying to shoehorn them into less than ideal locations. It’s not just a matter of selecting a fancy design from some catalog or national supplier and sticking it somewhere that looks nice on a rendering but more importantly it’s about locating racks in sites that cyclists will want to use.

Keep up the coverage, Steve!

Hope this helps….

Urban Neighbors really did a fantastic job on designing them. Although personally, I think the location on some could be improved (people are far less likely to utilize racks out on a street corner or a few feet from the street than those nestled safely next to a building, and that shows in the usage since installation), but overall that project was a real credit to UN.

Unrelated to the lights but related to the picture posted: love the curb extensions and the setback parking spaces, but doesn’t the big radius in the crosswalk go against the advice given by Jeff Speck to avoid such things? His position was that, while doing so makes it easier for cars to turn corners and get around, it effectively and dramatically increases the distance a pedestrian must walk to get across the intersection, negatively impacting walkabiltiy.

When people drive out of downtown to areas of the city with vertical traffic signals, they will think they have traveled to another city….