January 9, 2008
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.
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Looks like the perfect place to drop in and do a bump of gak before doucheing it up at Critical Mass.
I used to commute every day in the Caltrain bike car. Nice to see the traffic jam in the car is still as congested as ever.
The cynics are right. There's also a fair amount of group paralysis in solving the problems.
I suspect that if Caltrain had a fair refund scheme for bicyclists who are denied service, more capacity would magically be found.
"Looks like the perfect place to drop in and do a bump of gak before doucheing it up at Critical Mass."
Confirmed. Last September they abandoned the whole outfit at Critical Ass time, to the dismay of this regular bike commuter. Nice one.
And, Jonathan calls WPB "secure bike parking." Last I checked, it's not secure for overnight parking, just for during-the-day parking. By contrast, Palo Alto has always been both.
@Clifbar
Maybe you should check before posting. Your bike is parked free for up 2 days and then after that late fees apply.
http://www.warmplanetbikes.com/parking.shtml
The operative word is "secure," SanFranCitizen. Sure, bikes apparently sit there overnight. But the worker there told me that the facility is not set up for secure overnight parking due to its vulnerabilities.
The worker was clearly not the proprietor, whom she gladly phoned when I questioned the logic of that policy; whatever manager she reached confirmed it.
clifbar - are you going to great lengths to point out to any bike thieves that WPB would be an AWESOME place to break into at night?
"clifbar - are you going to great lengths to point out to any bike thieves that WPB would be an AWESOME place to break into at night?"
Doubtful, but it sounds like that's what the WPB is doing by freely giving out such information to people.
It seems to me all clifbar is doing is pointing out that WPB still has some kinks that need to be worked out before being blindly hailed as the most amazing thing to come to bike commuters since painted bike lanes.
Of course, maybe you'd rather have incomplete information so you can get self-righteously pissy if your bike got stolen while in WPB's custody.
Let's see: on the one hand, a buried post in an internet message board, and on the other, a facility that advertises its own self as a target with a big red banner that says "BIKES PARK HERE" and glass walls on multiple sides.
Yeah, clearly the internet poster is the one going to great lengths. It's the Dick Cheney school of "you're a traitor simply if you talk about what our weaknesses are."
It seems to me all clifbar is doing is pointing out that WPB still has some kinks that need to be worked out before being blindly hailed as the most amazing thing to come to bike commuters since painted bike lanes.
One can debate how great the bike lanes are... sigh...
so if I understand this correctly their business model is to offer free bike parking and to engender good will so people will buy bike related things from them? Is this a totally independent business? Or do they receive subsidizes?
It would be nice if Bart stations had more of these