New York City bike rack contest: Hoop wins

How are they going to pin that thing to the ground? Seems like it wouldn't fit more than a couple bolts. Sure, stealing the rack with a bike wouldn't be convenient, but the rack itself doesn't see, like it would be all that secure, which seems like trouble to me.
 

Ironic that it looks like a car steering wheel.

That aside, let me be the first to say, "Nice Rack".
 

@Tony: There's a photo of this rack in the wild at the NYTimes, but I don't have any clue how it's attached to the ground. Maybe it's glued in place?

The article describes it as cast iron so it's at leat heavy.
 

@al: Boulder Colorado used to take old steering wheels and attach them to parking meters for bike racks. They use commercial metal hoops for their parking meter racks now.
 

Hah...that's all you guys got? Check out the winners of Austin's bike rack design contest:

http://www.terrorintheheartland.com/2008/11/03/downtown-bicycle-rack-winners/

Boo.yah.
 

Kate, I like those Austin designs - very nice. But does Austin plan to install 5,000 of those like NYC does?
 

Considering that Austin has less than a tenth of NYC's population, and even less of which live in areas accessible by bicycles...no.

:D
 

@Yokota
That NYTimes pic looks photoshoped...concept image or something. Look at the way the chain lays on the rack, looks funny.
 

Sweet. Love the design. Simple, clean, and it made me think of bicycle wheels and the ecology symbol as well.

Alan @ EcoVelo
 

@Kate
Those gear tree racks seem like a horrible idea. Just the ideaof tripping and running a shoulder into a giant line of gears...ow.
 

Those new NYC racks should be popular with the "fixie crowd"...the thing looks like the requisite "Arrospok" (minus one spoke).
 

It seems to be fixed to the ground by a mounting system that bolts to the ring and then to the ground. I think it looks pretty neat and would be beautiful if there were a dozen of them lined along the whole length of a street. I just wish these racks were designed with more than 2 bikes in mind. They fill up so fast!
 

=v= Yep, I like the ecology symbol, and NYC has a handful of other designs by David Byrne.

NYC also has two award-winning bike racks designed to protect street trees: [PDF format, 237kb].
 

While beautiful, it look extremely weak to me. An enormous amount of leverage can be put upon the tiny footprint at the bottom. It looks, however, like the NYT photo of it installed in Astor Place may involve a much larger footplate to solve this very problem.

A typical design cop-out: Design an elegant object that cannot survive without an ugly prosthetic, but display it in magazines without that prosthetic. It's like electronic devices being shown without bulky ugly power cords.