I just noticed these bike lockers by the 19th / Broadway BART Stop in Oakland:
The way this system works is you get some kind of smart card similar to Translink or FastPass. It maintains a balance of funds (like $20) which you use to gain access to the locker. The rates are an arbitrarily low 3-5 cents per hour.
I’m not sure I get the point. Sure it may be superficially more secure for long term parking, but it’s also a waste of space (only 4 bikes fit in the lockers seen above), nowhere near ubiquitous, expensive to maintain, and seems to encourage people to not carry a real lock. According to BART these are available in mostly east bay cities.
Has anyone used one of these and find it to be more practical or secure than hitching up next to a parking meter?
 which you use to gain access to the locker. The rates are an arbitrarily […]</p>
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A lot of stations on caltrain have similar lockers. I would guess typically in rows of 10 or 20. Palo Alto as “double decker” bike lockers. I don’t know what the fee structure is.
Not sure if they still have it, but the Stanford Shopping Center has something similar.
Five cents an hour is a great deal though, that’s $1.20 for a full 24 hours. Awesome.
Doode it’s Oakland, not Valencia / 18th.
You don’t get out of the house much, do you?
i think the purpose is to prevent your bike from being stripped totally naked.
ever locked your bike somewhere and returned to find all removable parts gone? it’s sad.
Yes I have used them, and yes I like them.
BART has a policy of no bikes during commute hours — basically, no bikes when I need BART. So I cannot take my bike into the city and lock it up in the bike room of my building when I commute via BART. On a side note, I think this is closely related to their love of running short trains during commute hours as well.
Without the lockers, the only option is to lock the bikes in the “bike rack” area of the station, which is also the area the crackheads visit when they want to steal some bike parts. The nifty part of this arrangement is that BART also seems to have an official policy that the only thing station agents are supposed to watch for when bikes are concerned is that nobody ride the bike in the station. Crackheads stealing parts from bicycles in the middle of the day in full view of the station agent is A-OK!
So, when I ride my bike to the station and commute into the city on BART for work, I would much rather pay a few cents to lock up my bike securely all day long than to wonder what parts will be missing when I return in the evening.
My sister uses it in the east bay all the time. She says it makes her bike “unfuckwithable.”
Yeah these things are great. Pretty cheap too (3 – 5 cents per hour) and they keep my seat dry when it’s raining. Plus it’s nice to be able to leave helmet, lights, seat, lock & other junk in there as well. One downside is that I have seen dudes using them as makeshift urinals on occasion.
WHY? If you have to ask, maybe you’ll never know. But here goes…
I park my bike at an East Bay station and leave it there overnight so I can avoid the no-bike-during-commute hours.
Twice my bike has been destroyed – either by thieves trying to steal it, or by drunken assholes taking out their anger on my bike.
I really wish the station I use would put these new bike lockers in, and here’s why: The old style lockers are for rent on a month-to-month basis – there is a waiting list that is over a year long for most of these older lockers. BART is extrememly bureaucratic when it comes to renting them, as well. Furthermore, I’ve not once seen anyone using the old-style lockers at my station – yet BART still says they’re all rented out.
Any way that would make the bike lockers easier to use would be fantastic in my book! These new lockers seem to be the perfect fix.
BTW: The station where my bike was twice plundered is DIRECTLY across the street from a BART police station. There are bikes stolen from the station on a weekly basis (as evidenced by the plethora of broken / cut bike lock debris lying around the racks). I’ve notified the BART police about this and they don’t give a flying fuck about bike theft.
Yeah, I guess as someone who walks to BART every day, I never realized that long term bike parking is a major issue. I’ve never had to do it, thank god. Not that I haven’t had bikes fucked with anyway.
I also wonder about a few more scenarios with these lockers:
- What if your balance runs out while your bike is in there? Do they keep it locked in there until you pay up or do they just deactivate the lock?
- What if there’s a power outage? Is your bike held hostage?
- Are they RFID based? Apparently, you can sniff and clone these signals right out of the air.
Yeah, the “cheap” part is the problem.
I spent 10 years living 2 miles from the Pleasant Hill BART station before I moved to SF. Ideal for biking to BART, but theft is a huge problem, so you can’t just leave your bike locked up outside the station or you’ll return to no seat etc. (echoing El Jeffe’s sentiments).
I was on the waiting list for a bike locker the whole time (**TEN** YEARS!). My slot never came up because the rent was so cheap that people who had lockers never bothered to give them up, even if they didn’t use them.
The advantage of these are that they service multiple users rather than having to wait ‘***TEN**YEARS’ to be able to rent a locker in a fixed location that only serves a single person.
http://elocktech.com/
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I love, love, love them. I work in San Leandro and leave my bike in the East Bay during the week and for the past two years have had over six quick release tabs stripped, a seat stolen, my tires slashed and pulled off my bike, parts pulled off my handlebars, etc. Then in September both u-locks I was using were cut right outside the BART. So I finally invested the 3 cents an hour in a bike locker and it’s changed my life. I’m no longer anxiety ridden every time I get off the train. It’s really wonderful. Plus, as MG said, they allow multiple users so I can almost always find a free one.
These lockers cost a fortune to use in the UK. However bikes cost more than ever to buy and with crime up it makes sense to spend a bit to ensure you investment stays in one piece.
There must be nothing worse than walking home with just a pair of handle bars.