// Is There A Place I Can Lock This?
Posted on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
I just recently went on a little shopping trip by bicycle. I started with a smoothie at Jamba Juice in Emeryville. Then I moved on to the Nike Store at Bay Street Shopping Mall, also in Emeryville. From there I headed to Sports Authority and Office Depot, these two also being in Emeryville.
I normally love to any kind of errand on my bike. I get groceries at Berkeley Bowl or Trader Joe’s, ride to Aquatic Park in Berkeley when I go rowing. Yesterday I rode from my office in Orinda over the hills and home to Emeryville. It’s a great means of transportation, and can make dull errands a little more fun. But there is nothing more frustrating than the complete lack of racks. Especially where I live, in Emeryville.
I asked at one store, and they told me to just lock my bike to the handicapped parking sign. At Office Depot, they told me as long as I was just making an in and out trip to get compressed air (which, as I told them, was what I was doing), that I could just bring my bike in the store. At Bay Street, there was one bike rack. And not one rack as in one piece of metal that can hold several bikes–this was really just one loop of metal. It could comfortably hold two bikes, and there was already one there when I got there. I was left with few options, so I locked my bike to sign posts, to benches, or (at Office Depot) I took it inside with me.
I once spoke with an employee at Trader Joe’s who told me that their bicycle rack (which, by the way, can really only accommodate 3 or 4 bikes) was installed by the City of Emeryville, and that Trader Joe’s had had no hand in it. Is it true then, that the City is the reason there are so few bike racks? Do they take it upon themselves to provide racks and then not do a good job? And are they forbidding businesses to put in bike racks, or can the businesses do as they please?
I think we should give some incentive to businesses who install a decent number of bike racks. After all, it’s good for public health and good for the environment to have people cycling. If there’s nowhere to lock their bikes when they get to the places they’d like to shop or dine at, then they won’t bicycle at all. And that’s a shame.
I’d really like feedback on this issue. Who’s responsibility is it to make sure that businesses are bicycle friendly? And how can we encourage them to be more so?
BATN offers incentives to stores + employers to purchase discounted bike racks.