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Comment by notatoad | Hacker News Reader

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.

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I think that, in practice, locking the frame and rear wheel is enough to deter most bike thieves.

Yes, they could steal the front wheel, but it's hardly worth the effort. It's difficult to sell, and you can't get away quickly.

> Yes, they could steal the front wheel, but it's hardly worth the effort. It's difficult to sell, and you can't get away quickly.

That doesn't seem to be the case where I live (South-central Indiana). It's common to see abandoned bikes locked to the rack with the front wheel missing. I once went to the public library for an hour and came out to find my front wheel had been stolen. I'd rather lock my frame and front wheel than my frame and rear wheel.

This isn't a question of a sufficiently long lock cable?

I guess. But if you design a bike rack requires a cable that's longer than most bike locks, it might be a bad bike rack.

Cables can be snipped in seconds. Securely locking a bike requires a D-lock, the smaller the better.

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.

I live in a city where bike theft happens, but you're reasonably sure to come back to an intact bike if the frame is locked to something attached to the ground. The security aspect of the Sheffield stand may not be necessary, but I still prefer them. There are a couple of reasons for that.

Spacing is one reason. While you may share a stand with someone else, the next stand is going to be two to three feet away. I don't have to untangle my bike from other bikes, and I don't have to worry about damaging the bike of somebody else.

Support is the other reason. Bikes are easy to knock down and relatively easy to mangle. There is a reason why the article referred to some of the racks as wheel benders. I have also seen bikes that were mangled by cars after falling onto the street. That's not a concern with the Sheffield stand.

Those Sheffield things barely exist here and where they do, they're always taken with other bikes parked all over the place around them so you can't really get your bike back out anyway without lifting other bikes aside. Theres tons of bikes and very little room here since cars need all that's available, so if your bike passes as ordinary, you'll come back to an intact bike regardless of how you lock it, as long as you lock it at all. "Wheelbender" stands haven't caused any wheel issues or other issues for me in three decades of use, and at least those usually are available and have a free spot somewhere, so I wouldn't call them "useless" by a long shot. They may be to you, but I'd rather we over here keep them since the alternative wouldn't be lots and lots of those Sheffield things, there'd be no room for that unless we drastically downsize car parking and I definitely don't see that happen here. I'm sure theft is a huge issue in other places, but it doesn't seem to be that big an issue here so I'm happy if there's any reserved space at all where my bike isn't in someone's way. Just different places having different problems I guess.

A lot of places need to learn how to accommodate cyclists since we already deal with a lot of nonsense that would be considered inconceivable in the case of motorists. Consider parking. Not only do most cities stipulate how much parking must be available for vehicles, no one is going to put up with parking spaces that are so narrow that vehicles are physically touching one another. In contrast, cyclists frequently have to fit their bikes together like a jigsaw puzzle. That is assuming that space is made available in the first place. Hunting down a sign or small tree are often the only options.

Then there are the other indignities, the most common being improperly installed stands. My current favourite though is how my city installed some post and ring stands, then used them to secure signs for a construction project. (The irony is that cyclists now have to secure their bikes to sign posts that are secured by bike stands!) Whenever parking is reduced due to construction, city hall hears about it. Whenever a bike stand is rendered useless, cyclists are supposed to be grateful for what we have.

As for the space requirements for the Sheffields, the least efficient arrangement that I can think of would still handle six bikes in one parking spot. When you factor in the amount of space used by aisles, which don't need to be as wide for bikes, the average will be closer to 17 bikes per parking space. That is not much of a sacrifice. Indeed, it would free up a fair amount of space. Space that could be used for homes, businesses, or even parkland assuming that you could convince people to bike instead.

(I did some quick arithmetic: two parking spots separated by an aisle is 450 square feet, or the size of a small apartment. Managing to eliminate 25 parking spots is the equivalent of freeing up a quarter acre lot, which is sufficient for detached home and yard.)

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