Its common knowledge that most bike racks suck, I know. (And fuck those art piece ones too.)
I avoid them whenever possible. I think most people with something other than a Next MTB or a sweet Peugeot conversion do the same.
Anyway, the university i teach at apparently has connections with Next or sweet fixie parts wholesalers because theyve started giving bicycle tickets for every bike not locked to a proper rack. Locked to a pole, railing, sign or whatever…50 bucks. BTW, there are almost no racks on the whole campus.
Of course they also now require bike registration and a non-reg’d bike gets a $25 fine and after more than one offense gets cut free and impounded with a huge cost to get the bike back plus your ticket fines. So no reg and not on a rack can get you a $75 ticket and your bike gone, at least.
The sad thing is that the school has huge parking problems for cars and very few people commute on bikes. Meanwhile they seem to be discouraging bikes on campus with these dumb fines and little to no “racks”.
acquire dozens of beat-ass useless bikes and load them into a bigass truck.
lock them 5-10 deep in front of the doorways to the parking enforcement’s office at night, creating a huge mess of bikes that will be a giant PITA to remove.
profit.
That’s how I would handle it, anyway. My school started handing out a lot of bicycle tickets in my last year there, so the co-op had a little on-the-DL course in how to run from the cops on campus and get away 100% of the time.
Not a bad idea. They need a kick in the ass somehow.
I got a ticket for locking to a street sign today, which is how I found out. A campus bike cop was sitting 20 feet away watching me lock up. I wondered WTH he was doing and then later I come back to the ticket. Jackass could have just said hey dont do that.
Luckily they let it slide at security cause its first day.
Currently locked up just off campus.
Editorial in the school paper and local paper.
Letter to the dean/president/important people.
There’s probably an environmental/green club on campus too. I’d bug them about it.
Start a one-man cycling advocacy organization, go to the SGA and ask for money, then hound whoever in the administration made that rule.
when i was in school, i had a friend who lived in a dorm with only the shitty kind of racks in front (most of campus has decent big upside-down U things cemented to the ground, best locking situation i’ve come across). anyhow, i’d visit pretty regularly and just lock my bike to a low hanging branch in this out-of-sight cluster of trees. i doubt this is actually a good idea, but it’s what i did and it didn’t ever backfire on me.