Contributed Photo
The city has a new idea about how to stop people from stealing your bike by messing with the bike rack.
It has put up new racks that are designed as part of parking meter posts on Orange Street between Chapel and George and on Crown Street between State and Church.
Mayoral spokeswoman Anna Mariotti described the design thusly:
“The design of these particular bike racks are such that they can be incorporated with existing infrastructure, in this case, parking meters. The rack slides over the existing parking meter post rather than clamp around the post and is one solid piece, which makes them tamper proof as there are no exposed bolts to remove the rack from the meter. There are two welded loops on either side of the sleeve, giving cyclists two points pf contact to lock their bicycle rather than one.
“The black inverted‑u bike racks that you see throughout the City of New Haven are also installed by the Department of Transportation, Traffic and Parking, but require a certain amount of space around them. In some circumstances, sidewalk width and other existing infrastructure such as telephone poles, sidewalk planters, etc cannot accommodate these space requirements. These do not require additional space to accommodate bicycles due to their adaptability.”
Awesome! Very clever, someone is going to make a mint on those. Hope this helps increase biking, especially in concert with Yale's new bike sharing program.
Omission, though - ["The black inverted-u bike racks that you see throughout the City of New Haven are also installed by our department]
Which department? It's not stated, and the speaker is a mayoral spokesman. Is it the mayor's department? Is John out there installing bike racks? :)