New thoughts on NYC bike racks

Last night I was down by Astor Place so I finally got to see the finalists' bike rack designs in person. I don't have any new pictures to share, but after seeing them up close, I've revised my thoughts about some of them.

First of all, I ruled out all of the entries which featured a colored powdercoat finish. Including the Lang/Dobbs yellow Y-rack which I previously chose as my favorite design. The reason is simple - these racks have only been up for a week or so and they already look like hell with the paint scratched up terribly.

I still like the Y-rack as a design on paper, but in the real world it would function much better without a painted finish, and that would compromise part of it's appeal. Some people are also saying that skateboarders will be all over that thing, but I reject that arguement. No one's going to skate on it when bikes are locked to it, and if there are no bikes, who cares if some kids are skating on it or a pedestrian uses it as a seat?

Besides being powdercoated, the Open Thread 4-bike rack is simply way too big.

The flexible cable rack by Next Phase Studios is not as bad as I thought it was (not too flexible), but it still seems like a gimmick and is likely to create unnecessary production costs.

I still really like the Ignacio Ciocchini circle rack with the vertical green stripe. Even though this rack has some green powdercoat, it's not painted on the circular part of the rack, which is the primary bicycle contact point. To me, this design simply provides all of the necessary functionality while fitting in best with existing NYC street furniture.

I've substantially improved my view of the Jeff Miller & Andrea Ruggiero diamond shaped rack. This thing is DURABLE. It looks good in person. And I like the green plastic strip which protects both the rack and your bike. This could easily be my top choice, but I still like the look of the Ciocchini rack better.

After eliminating all the powdercoating and the gimmicks, the Ian Mahaffy & Maarten De Greeve circle rack gets elevated to third place, in my opinion. Any of the other racks which I have not mentioned, my opinion has not substantially changed from my previous post.

So, these are my new top 3 picks:

1. Ciocchini - circle rack w/green stripe
2. Miller/Ruggiero - cast iron w/protective plastic
3. Mahaffy/De Greeve - circle w/horizontal crossbar

NYC - New Bike Rack design finalists

EDIT: After seeing the racks in person, I've posted my revised thoughts on the finalists and have updated my top 3 picks. Follow this link to read my updates.

The 10 finalists in NYC's CityRacks bike rack design competition are on view at Astor Place. I haven't had a chance to see them in person yet, but as an artist and a cyclist I figure I'm qualified to offer my $0.02 on the designs.

Below is an image of each rack, followed by my commentary. Be sure to check out the excerpts from the designers' original submissions on the CityRack design website.


Andrew Lang and Harry Dobbs
This is my favorite of the 10 finalists. I think the standard inverted "U" rack is already a pretty good design, and this basically improved upon it with 2 important features:

First, although it can still only accommodate two bikes at a time, it is wider than the inverted "U" so that any type of bike can be locked in a variety of places. This also allows for easily securing the frame and the wheels and prevents the bike from falling over while locked up.

Second, the rack is designed from rectangular triangular tubing which forms a closed loop instead of open ended pipe. This makes the rack more resistant to being broken and if it were somehow knocked out of the ground, the bike still could not be removed because of the closed loop.

Also, it's a nice touch that it can be powder-coated in a variety of colors and inserted into the I *heart* NY logo.


Baroni Valeriani architetti
This rack sucks so bad that the cyclist preferred to lock up to a sign post. If you lock up to this rack, you can expect to come back only to find everything gone but your wheel, since it's not tall enough to lock up the frame. Pedestrians will probably trip over this thing also.


Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve
Functionally, this is not bad. The horizontal cross bar prevents your lock from sliding down to the ground where it is more vulnerable to attack. However, the single point of contact with the ground looks weak. Also, it doesn't really look like it fits in with NYC street furniture -- too sleek and round. Perhaps a different color or patina would help. I like this brown, rusty look better.


Federico Otero
This rack looks like it could do the job. And you could probably squeeze 3 bikes on this rack, unlike the others so far, which can only handle 2 bikes. My only complaint would be the round tubing could be vulnerable to pipe cutters, but this design wouldn't look as good made from a rectangular bar. Maybe it's a bit too boring?


Francis Anthony Bitonti (FADarch)
WTF is this crap? Is that a bike rack or a model for some generic public sculpture? Besides being ugly, it looks like it could be difficult or impossible to use a U-lock with this rack. Also, apparently this particular rack is no longer on display -- according to a comment I read on Gothamist, that's because it was made out of some sort of foam and it broke. Booo!


Ignacio Ciocchini
This rack looks like it belongs on a NYC street. Something about the green paint and the bare metal reminds me of the scaffolding structures that are constantly set up over the sidewalks. But it's much better to lock your bike to this than to scaffolding. I like it -- thumbs up.


Jeff Miller & Andrea Ruggiero
This rack appears to be made out of plastic. PLASTIC. I don't care what it looks like or how "high-density polypro" they claim it is, I'm not locking my bike up to a plastic rack.
CORRECTION: Apparently I was wrong. This rack is cast iron, not plastic. The green part is plastic, attached to the iron rack. I'm still not a big fan of the design, but this makes it MUCH better than I originally thought, and now my primary objection is aesthetics. It looks too much like those free newspaper dispensers cluttering the sidewalk.

Also, the version of this rack in the original proposal has space for advertising, and we don't need any more damn advertisments.


Next Phase Studios
This rack is made of a thick, flexible, metal cable. Not as bad as plastic, I suppose, but WHY? Next...


Stephan Jaklitsch Architects PC
This is an OK design, but really not that exciting visually. There might be some trouble with getting a U-lock around the thicker sections of the lower portion of the rack. Once again, I like the green color (seems appropriate for NYC), but I like that this design allows for different colors and bare aluminum.


Open Thread Design
Besides the Andrew Lang/Harry Dobbs design which I already stated was my favorite, this is the only other rack that I'm strongly in favor of. In addition to the sturdy rectangular barstock, the main advantage of this rack is that it can easily accommodate 4 bikes, more than any of the other racks in the competition. That's probably also it's biggest disadvantage -- this rack takes up way too much space to be used throughout the city. But that may not be such a big problem, since the Open Thread Design team also came up with a 2 bike version that can also function as sign post.

Maybe we can have 2 winners?