This past summer I went to 'Park This!' which was a panel discussion on bicycle parking options at the Museum of Vancouver. It bemoaned this city's far below average bicycle parking options. I have long found Vancouver to be an easy city to bike around in, but a difficult city to find adequate bicycle parking. I'm not talking about covered and locked stalls or fancy underground robotic bicycle racks -- just your basic metal poles. Many times I've found myself locking up to fences, sign poles, or other city infrastructure that's not exactly ideal.

However, in the last few months I have been noticing the city putting up more bicycle parking structures around town, mainly through the company Urban Racks and especially in areas that have a lot of bicycle traffic like Commercial Drive and Main Street. All this is good news. The thing is, though, that there doesn't seem to be just one design of bicycle parking, but a kind of hodge-podge of different designs. And not all designs are created equal.

Main Street seems to get the Toronto-style lollipop, which is my absolute favourite choice for bicycle parking across the city. They don't take up much room, are inconspicuous, are easily locked up to with a number of different size locks, and can be configured to be parallel or perpendicular to the sidewalk.

One of the great things about these is that you can have a line of many of them on the street like they do in New York City to create a row of bicycle parking that is far enough apart so even when full you don't have to wrestle your bike out from a tangled heap of handlebars, brake cables and peddles. Pedestrians can also still walk in between a line of parked bikes, rather than having to go around large racks.

It seems as though the city has opted for the bicycle parking option that I have pictured above, which can be found on Commercial Drive (where this picture was taken) and also on the new Granville Street. There are a few reasons why I don't think this design is best, the most important being that because each part is fairly thick, so that anyone with a smaller U-lock is going to have a hard time attaching their bike to it if they want to get both their wheel and frame. I walked past several of these where people had opted to lock their bike to a pole or bench leg instead of the bicycle rack next to it.

There are a few cities that have even held design contests for bicycle parking options. The winning design from the New York City contest seems to be a good fit for a number of different types and lengths of locks, but it's basically the same as the tried and true lollipop.

There's definitely not a shortage of different ideas around the world for bicycle parking options. Just a quick Google image search gets you anything from bicycle racks designed by David Byrne to ones that make really good use of small spaces.

But with bicycle parking you want something that is effective, simple, safe, and plentiful. It doesn't have to be fancy, it just has to work.

Pictured photo is my own.