In my car-centric city (southeast USA, population ~125k) when I visit private property with no bicycle parking, I try to find the owner and offer to install one of these just for the cost of materials. The idea being, they can put in another one when they see more than one customer on a bicycle at the same time. It's very cheap, less than 100 bucks typically as I have the requisite tools in my garage to make them from scratch out of metal tubing. There's a variety of materials, finishing, and mounting options the property owner can choose from. I've done about a dozen of them, it makes biking around my city much more pleasant and my day is brighter when I see someone else using one.
In praise of the humble Sheffield stand
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Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand
#32I don't understand why many of the stands he calls useless are useless. Sure most of them are less economical but as long as there's a loop of metal anchored to the ground how is it useless?
Securely locking your bike means locking both wheels and frame to the rack. Any rack that doesn't reach all three of those things is impossible to securely lock to.
Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand
#33Note: The twitter OP has put the #/n indicator in-between the caption and the photo. Which makes sense on Twitter, but when threadreader strips out the formatting it makes it look like the captions line up with the wrong image. Captions precede the corresponding images in this thread.
Strange example of a Twitter thread that is less readable when turned into a blog post!
Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
They don't work for many bicycle geometries[1]. Small vs large frames, small vs large wheels, wide vs narrow tyres, tricycles, tandem bikes, cargo bikes, recumbent bikes, hand-cranked bikes etc. Also if they are too finicky about the exact way you lock the bike (particular orientation, particular lock-point) it can be hard to make it work when there are obstacles (such as other bikes). The Sheffield stand makes the f…
You're supposed to fix the frame to the stand, why are you just attaching the wheel? Wheel "grabbers" (usually just called 'fietsenrek') are pretty common in the Netherlands, especially the 2 level ones, because they allow the greatest number of bikes in a small area. This does have some downsides obviously, but in the Netherlands 'largest number of bikes' tends to outweigh other concerns.
> You're supposed to fix the frame to the stand, why are you just attaching the wheel?
Because the "wheel grabber" makes it very hard to lock the frame as well as the wheel. About all that is possible without a long wire (which are generally easy to cut and thus inferior to a D-lock) is to get the lock through the rear triangle. This assumes you're able to get the bike in rear wheel first, of course.
I'd rather find a fence or lamppost over using a wheel grabber. I get that density is a concern in the Netherlands but it probably isn't outside the local convenience store everywhere else.
Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand
#35Url changed from https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1493299809574342659, which points to this.
It's fine to posts links to alternative views in the thread, but please submit the original source (per https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand
#36I don't understand why many of the stands he calls useless are useless. Sure most of them are less economical but as long as there's a loop of metal anchored to the ground how is it useless?
Securely locking your bike means locking both wheels and frame to the rack. Any rack that doesn't reach all three of those things is impossible to securely lock to.
Though if your bike isn't expensive or rare and you're in an area with tons of such bikes, secure locking isn't all that important. Just have some sort of lock so it can't be wheeled away inconspicuously. At least that's what everyone here does and it seems to work well enough.
Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand
#37For most bike "racks" here in NL it seems like the primary purpose is not security, but just having somewhere to lean bikes against and give people a sensible place to park their bikes (as opposed to "in a huge pile")
Most people don't bother physically locking their regular city bikes to anything (only using a ring lock on the bike itself), primarily cheap beater bikes but also there's a guy in my street with a €2000 Van Moof e-bike that I think is just leaning against his front wall.
Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand
#38Sadly, no amount of locking points provides sufficient protection against an experienced thief. In London, I've seen some of these Sheffield stands cut with an angle grinder.
Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand
#39While the overall point of simple racks being better definitely stands, the premise that a bike needs two locks is just silly and impractical. Get wheel locks for your bikes - pinhead, hexlox (my favorite), etc. If your wheels are secured to the frame you just need to lock the frame with one lock/chain.
Takes way less time to park and you dont need to lug multiple 5lb locks (unfortunately thats how heavy secure locks actually are).
Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand
#40This is a very angry person.
He claims he's going to explain why the alternatives are crap.
The first he starts off OK. I've never seen this specific design, but fine, you can't securely lock your bike. No explanation on what "securely" means (presumably at least two locks, one through each wheel)
He talks about "wheel benders", but doesn't explain what makes them deserve such a name.
It goes downhill from there. Number 3 his entire argument is "kill it with fire".