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What We Need Is A Bike Valet
Bike valet parking is great -- but what we really need is a bike valet, someone to lay out our freshly laundered cycling duds, to provide discreet, expert service and adjustments to our gleaming bicycle fleet, and to suggest the appropriate bicycle for any given occasion.
The good news: today’s used-bike-tube-ribbon-cutting marked the official opening of Warm Planet Bicycles, a free bike parking service and shop specializing in commuter needs, located by the San Francisco Caltrain Station at 4th and Townsend Streets. (Townsend between 4th and 7th is really more like an elongated, spastic parking lot than a street, but that’s another argument entirely.)
The bad news: we had to catch the 11:37 train, and so we missed all the speechifying and good vibes, as well as the actual tube-snipping.
The friendly folks at Warm Planet are ready to help you in a variety of ways:
1. They’ll stash your bike safely so you don’t have to take it on the train. This morning at 11-ish, there were lots of bikes happily stowed in the warm, dry, and secure shop, but it looked like there was plenty more room, so you don’t need to be an early riser to take advantage of the free service.
2. If you want to take a bike on the train, they’ve got a range of folding bikes for sale -- that way, you won’t get kicked off the train when the sun comes out and it gets crowded (Caltrain permits folding bikes on board even if the bike racks are full -- here are the complete rules for bikes on Caltrain).
3. And even if you’re just thinking about riding your bike to work, they’ll talk you through it, listen to your concerns, and maybe even suggest turgid readings such as Albert, E. “Dealing with Danger: The Normalization of Risk in Cycling” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 34/2 (1999): 157-171.
A little more bad news: cynics among us think Caltrain would prefer not to have bikes on the train at all, substituting secure bike parking such as Warm Planet and the Palo Alto Bike Station for more bike capacity on the trains. So if you have any distance to travel on the other end, you’ll need to keep a second bike at your destination. We won’t have to worry, though -- our bike valet will see to it that a fresh steed awaits at our final stop.
