Conceptual bicycle tree lifts your bike to safety
A conceptual bike tree for cities with both a lot of bikes and a lot of bike crooks. Amsterdam, I'm looking at you: there is something seriously out of whack when a city's entire bicycle economy is based upon buying your bike back from the same brown-toothed junkie two to three times a month with the same nonchalance as a transaction with your local green grocer.
The concept's somewhat solid: the tree reduces bike rack clutter and lifts your bicycle above the bolt cutters of roaming thieves. It's certainly an attractive way to store bikes. Security is a finger print scanner, which may be a design flaw: after all, those bolt cutters can just as easily be used against your waggling digits as your bike lock.
Bicycle Tree [Coroflot via Gizmodo]
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It's all whiz-bang futuristic and all, but if the problem is buying your bike back from the same people over and over, I think a few carefully chosen beatdowns from the bike riding community might be a better and cheaper solution.
#1: Unfortunately, as a rule, junkies are far more willing to drag you far further down that slope that you might care to go.
Having been to Amsterdam many, many times, I have yet to have a bike stolen. For that matter, I have yet to see a brown-toothed junkie, let alone one selling bikes. The dutch are very adept at securing their bikes to any immobile object. Based on my personal travels, I suspect the stories of buying one's bike back from a junkie are greatly exaggerated.
So to get my bike back, I have to depend on the proper functioning of fair bit of electronic and mechanical stuff deployed in a public street in an apparently crime-prone area. I'm not seeing the "clutter" reduction of bikes facing four different directions, unless you're lifting them high enough people are going to hang out underneath them, but I can't see making the space at the bottom usable for much else.
An upside-down U-shaped bar, both ends embedded in concrete at the bottom; additional Us parrallel, a couple feet apart. This is the perfect bike rack. I realize it's been invented, and isn't sexy. But I'll tell you one thing about every designer who thinks they've got something better: They're not cyclists.
As a side note, who uses a bike lock that can be defeated by bolt cutters? Even my $10 fairly light cable lock is thick enough to prevent that.
I think this idea has already been conceived and implemented:
http://www.biketree.com/
Wow that's great and all, but how does it work? How does it lift the bikes? Do you have to lift the bike yourself? What does it cost? What's the estimateed cost of storing your bike? Is the guy that drew this picture even serious about designing it or did he just happen to draw one?
I hate it when there's no info for these things.
@ Twoshort
Show me a cable lock that is thick enough to prevent cutting and I will show you a bigger pair of bolt cutters!
That why I now park my bike in my cubicle.
@ #3: Last time I was in Amsterdam, a few months ago, I was offered "used" bikes by two different shady people at between 3:00 and 4:00am.
They may not have been stolen, true. After all, I do most of my large-item sales after midnight....
@Gabrielm:
No, you won't; At least not "bolt cutters" in the classic two-handles-lever-the-jaws-together mode. To get the jaws to move further apart for the same handle action, you need to sacrifice mechanical advantage. Cutters that fit under a jacket and can get jaws apart enough to fit around a thick enough cable or u-lock piece don't have the leverage to cut that cable.
Thus the thief is forced to resort to the greater mechanical advantage of a screw-based mechanism: A car jack for the U-lock, or a thing I don't remember the name of for the cable. Both are bulky, require a bit of set up time, and are obvious as heck. Power tools will also do it. But either the (thick) cable or u-lock defeats the guy walking up and taking the bike with one quick snip, and so is probably sufficient for locking the bike for a few minutes while you run into a store. I find the cable easier and lighter, so that's what I've got.
No lock that exists will stop the guy who shows up properly equipped for the express purpose of taking the bike and has a minute or so to do it; so I second your parking inside recommendation for any lengthy periods.
I'm a big shot: I park my bike in its cubicle :)
Who cares about bolt-cutters in the time of battery powered angle-grinders anyway? Great thing for thieves, this: just cut the whole bicycle-tree off and get six bikes for the work of one! Sure, the same goes true for the upside-down U-shaped bars with ends in concrete, but those have the charm of also working on power outage or when somebody accidentally smashes the electronics box with his sledgehammer.
I think that explosive bolts would discourage bolt cutters. Surely NASA has a few of those lying around that we could liberate and experiment with.