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February 4, 2012

Don’t Knock This Opportunity

Recently, Bureau of Street Services changed the contractor it allows to provide benches at bus stops in exchange for the privilege of putting ads on the things. The old benches were awful plastic things, but the new ones are rather handsome dark-green affairs made of large-diameter steel tubing. They’re even a bit stylish, as you see from the snapshot below:


spacer You might note something else: that the tubing is about the diameter of the tubing used in bicycle parking racks….


In doing so, you will not be alone: I have often seen bicycles locked up to these new benches, presumably by folks doing those multi-modal commutes we all, in and out of the administration, are hoping to encourage. You know, solving transit riders’ first-mile/last-mile conundrum by making it easier to bicycle to or from the bus stop…. (I’ve also seen them used as racks by folks stepping out of a restaurant, on blocks where there weren’t “real” bike racks.)


Sometimes the bikes are locked up the long way, but many bikes won’t sit close enough to that transverse bar behind the backrest to lock up easily, so more often the bikes are perpendicular to the bench, blocking passersby on the sidewalk and folks trying to get on the bus.


Now, you’d expect our historically unimaginative city simply to outlaw locking to the bus benches, as they have outlawed locking to a parking meter (a law that no one has ever known to be enforced), but…we can do better. This is opportunity knocking!


Here’s my suggestion to the Bureau of Street Services: let’s modify those benches with a couple of security bolts to make sure that bracing bar can’t spin or be removed, then put an add-on bike locking loop on it.


A modified version of the Cyclehoop, with only half a loop, would work fine. Whoever makes LADOT’s current racks could certainly fabricate something like this.


It would be a huge boon to LA’s cyclists, boosting the number of racks in the city very cheaply, and it would benefit Metro too, by getting more riders to its buses. Getting some company or other to “sponsor” the retrofits would bring them bragging rights. And pedestrians as well as bus passengers would not find their way blocked by crosswise bicycles.


The anonymous bus and bike riders of LA have already started using these benches as bike racks. Let’s make it easier for them, and everyone around them, to keep riding bikes and buses for their daily travel.


It can only make our city better.


Are you listening, Los Angeles?


(Readers: if you like this idea, let Bureau of Street Services know here, but be civil about it, okay?)
 

Posted by: Richard Risemberg @ 4:15 pm Permalink | Comments

Tags: bench, bike parking, bike rack, Bureau of Street Services, bus, Cyclehoop, LADOT, last mile, metro, pedestrians, retrofit, sidewalk

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 4th, 2012 at 4:15 pm and is filed under current events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 Comment »

  1. [...] Risemberg writes in praise of the new Main Street road diet and bike lanes in Venice, and suggests turning bus benches into bike racks. How can we stop bike thefts when police are doing the stealing? More grants for environmental [...]

    Pingback by Three cyclists hospitalized after Seal Beach DUI hit-and-run; Palms Desert cyclist critically injured « BikingInLA — February 6, 2012 @ 1:01 am

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