Bike parking downgrade.

MichaelW

The stainless steel Sheffield Stands outside Norwich Forum (library) have just been uprooted and replaced with Streetpods.
The old stands were of the best kind with a horizontal rather than curved top, well spaced and had sufficient room from upright to wall for the widest 700c tyre.
For reasons unknown, they have just been ripped out and replaced a with a smaller number of these horrible Streetpods. The plastic is ripe for burning, cutting and graffitti by the local yoof. The mild steel is covered by a very poor grade of glavanized zinc, covered in sharp nodules to scratch your paintwork.
The company illustrate just one of their pods but if you stack them together, they are too close for a rider to stand between the bikes. You need to lift the front wheelup, being careful not to scrape lights against handlebars. People of limitted strength just cant use them.

I don't know where they get the money from and why , having a pot of money, they choose to do this.

.....
Even worse, this 3rd year student design project is getting awards and rave reviews from all kinds of people who dont use bicycles.
They rave about how it stores bikes with even less space than normal, like this is a big problem which needs a solution.
I really hope this doesnt become the Goto solution for any polo-neck wearing architect looking to sex-up his design.

Headhuunter

Looks ridiculous. I always carry to D locks and Sheffield stands, or at least a railing work well, these "pods" would mean that I couldn't use 2 D locks so my bike would be less secure. I would be finding a railing somewhere nearby and using that instead...

t4tomo

you can D lock front wheel to bike frame as well as rear wheel to the stand.
Its usgly but it doesn't look that bad. I'm guessing that it relies on no access to the front wheel to prevent that being nicked when just using one D lock - whether that works in practice is hard to judge from the photo.

Sureely anyone riding a bike can pop the front wheel into the pod?

Headhuunter

t4tomo wrote:

you can D lock front wheel to bike frame as well as rear wheel to the stand.
Its usgly but it doesn't look that bad. I'm guessing that it relies on no access to the front wheel to prevent that being nicked when just using one D lock - whether that works in practice is hard to judge from the photo.

Sureely anyone riding a bike can pop the front wheel into the pod?

Yeah but I like to D lock my wheel to the frame and then both to the stand and the same at the rear... That's more secure...