Yesterday, KVUE ran a story about Capital Metro doing a pilot test of a bike locker called the BikeLid at the Northwest Austin Pavilion Park and Ride.
From the story:
“Some people may be apprehensive about leaving their expensive bikes here all day. So this is another way to encourage them to give it another try,” said Capital Metro Spokesperson Misty Whited.
Whited says Capital Metro staff saw the product in other big cities and decided to give it a try at the Northwest Austin Pavilion Park and Ride location.
The directions are on the lid. A cyclist can park their bike inside, shut the lid and lock it with a cable or U-lock.
City of Austin Bike Program Manager Annick Beaudet helped Cap Metro get the product. She says she would like to see it used all over the city and that the cover is the key to keeping the thieves away.
“It’s not only the bike as the whole it’s the individual parts as well. In this building we’ve had thefts of seats only, handlebars only, they can be selective,” Beaudet said.
Bike lockers are very common at transit locations in cities like Portland and can be a real boon for those biking to a Park and Ride to leave their bike all day. The story reports that the City of Austin helped in the acquisition of this test locker and is also evaluating them for possible installation in other parts of Austin.
Related posts:
on Apr 15th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Hmm . . . according to the news story, they hope to get a couple of these at each park and ride location. Suppose you have a really expensive bike, there is no guarantee you would get an available pod. And if the pods tend to be used primarily by those with the most valuable bikes, wouldn’t the pods be an attractive target for thieves? After all, they are still ultimately secured by something like a U-lock and therefore subject to the same theft risks as a u-lock (electric grinder, other attacks). In fact, it looks like the lock would now attach to the pod rather than the bike so if the thieve does some damage in the act, it would now damage the locker not the bike.
On the other hand, if there were dozens of these everywhere we wanted to park our bikes, it would be more difficult for a thieve to determine which held a valuable bike and with many available, one could have greater confidence that a locker would be available to secure one’s bike. But with only one bike ped pod, a couple dozen bikes would require a couple dozen pods and a lot more space than bikes densely packed into racks.
It seems to me that it would be best to have a lot of these pods at any given location or else there might as well be none.
on Apr 16th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I catch the 982/983 from the Pavilion P&R and the locker has been there for a few weeks now. It’s a sturdy construction and certainly does hide the entire bike ,both from bad people and the elements, however it is bulky.
I’ve never seen it actively used, although it was left open the other day, but I suspect that once people know how to use it (requires some training?) it makes sense for a whole-day lockup type situation like with a Cap Metro commuter. But these are ultimately not feasible in on-street situations where space is limited.