Traffic planners here call the traffic state when pedestrians are crossing the road "dead time".
Some are too fat for a U-lock to fit around. Some are placed so close to a wall that you can't fit your bike in. Others have these vertical slats that you can stick your front tire in between, but you can't lock your frame to anything secure.
The people who designed and implemented these things must have never used a bicycle for practical purposes. The stupidity is mind boggling. It's not a difficult thing to get right.
This is probably copied from Copenhagen, where it's by far the most common type of rack.
Bicycles simply aren't locked to anything secure, unless you bring your own cable lock. That's something you might do with a flashy, new racing bike, or any other very new bike left outside e.g. into the late evening or night, although insurance should cover theft anyway.
If you have a kickstand, you don't even need to use the rack.
Fancy example: https://pricetags.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/norreport-2....
(The blame is still with the designer; it's obvious this isn't appropriate in many places outside Denmark.)
If this is what I'm picturing, you can often just lift the bike over so the rear of the front tire is in the vertical slats, instead of the front of the front tire. Then the frame is close to the rack, and you can lock your frame to the rack.