On Bike Racks

A pair of videos that still live rent-free in my head are the "Safe City Showdown" pair from Not Just Bikes and Shifter a few years ago. In them, the two bicyclists bike through Amsterdam and Calgary and compare the positive and negative elements of the two rides. The ride in Calgary reveals a bike rack at the hardware store that's the end point of the ride, and the two reviewers have opposite reactions: one is excited to see a rack at the store at all, and the other complains about its poor location and visibility.It's a strong reminder that the existence of infrastructure is not the same as the quality of infrastructure, and that here in North America we often get too obsessed with the question of whether there is even any non-car infrastructure at all at a given location, and not with whether that infrastructure is actually making bike/pedestrian/transit functional, pleasant, or positive.This brings me to the subject of bike racks. A friend recently pointed out that the bike rack…