[SDCBC] Japanese Multi-Level Bicycle Parking

[Mike Elliott]

Thanks, Stephan.

I haven't been to the Carlsbad Coaster station in a few weeks, but if 
memory serves, there are about 6, maybe 8, lockers there. They're always 
locked.

As I see it, the problem is not just an insufficient number of lockers 
(that's a guess, I can't tell how many of the lockers there are actually 
being used by commuters for bikes, and how many are empty, they've all 
have locks on them whenever I looked), but also what appears to the 
unaided eye (like mine) to be a locker system that works something like 
this: First come, get your lock on a locker and it's yours until you pull 
that lock off. No traceability, you can use it for auto parts storage if 
desired.

Will the new system prevent someone from sewing up a locker or two for as 
long as s/he wants?

-- 
Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott




On 4/19/2008 2:32 PM Stephan Vance wrote:

> Mike,
> 
> The plan for bike lockers in the count, brought to you by the bike locker
> and bike map folks at RideLink, is to replace all of today's bike lockers
> with electronically keyed lockers. The benefit to this is that an electronic
> a key card will allow you to use any locker in the region. No individual
> would exclusive rights to a locker. The trick to this system will be to
> provide enough lockers at every location to meet the peak demand. Since over
> half of all the 600 or so lockers in the region are empty at any given time,
> it should be possible to meet that demand with fewer lockers than we need
> today. 
> 
> The process of acquiring and deploying these lockers has been a little slow,
> but I'm told it's coming.
> 
> Stephan Vance
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sdcbc-bounces at bikesandiego.org [mailto:sdcbc-bounces at bikesandiego.org]
> On Behalf Of Mike Elliott
> Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2008 9:22 AM
> To: Sdcbc
> Subject: [SDCBC] Japanese Multi-Level Bicycle Parking
> 
> I'm not saying that we actually have a need for these things here in SD 
> county, but whenever I look at those few locked and presumably 
> spoken-for-forever bike lockers at the Carlsbad Coaster station I think 
> that it would be swell to have a safe place at the station to leave a good 
> bike for a few hours.
> 
> "The Multi-level bicycle park at Tokyo's Kasai Station might sound like a 
> crazy overblown way to tidy up the streets, but the woeful lack of 
> available parking spaces at most Japanese train stations is a real 
> problem. In some places legal parks are impossible to find and private 
> security guards are known for performing periodic sweeps where bicycles 
> are tossed in the back of a truck and impounded. At 100 Yen (about $1) per 
> day or 1,800 Yen (about $18) for a month, a multi-level parking spot is a 
> lot cheaper than the impound fee. Here's hoping that they proliferate."
> 
> Video on the link:
> 
> http://gizmodo.com/381738/japanese-multi+level-bicycle-parking
>