Bike parking rack designed for college campuses

When thousands of students bicycle on a college campus every day, as you can imagine, providing an adequate bike parking rack for each one can be a challenge.

The scale architects and planners face is just enormous. These are not a dozen bicyclists pedaling to classes. We're talking tens of thousands.

For example, at the University of California, Davis, there are approximately 20,000 bicycles on campus on any given day. (That's because the university and the town is probably the most bicycle-friendly place in America).

That's not an anomaly. When you think of the number of students enrolled at universities, the volume of cyclists is massive.

Colorado State University has 23,600 registered bicycles. More than 13,000 students bicycle on the Stanford University campus every day. The University of Minnesota installed 9,000 bicycle parking racks.

In fact, as we know, university planners want more students to ride their bicycles than drive because it's certainly very expensive and difficult to provide parking for 20,000 vehicles.

The challenge is this. If you want to encourage more students to bicycle, you need to provide a bike parking rack for each cyclist in multiple locations. But space on a campus is already limited.

Store more bicycles per square foot

One solution is a new type of bike dock called The UpLift. This unique bike parking rack was designed by experienced bicycle parking experts at The Park and Facilities Catalog.

The UpLift was created specifically for college campuses where spatial concerns are important.

Traditional school bike racks such as wave bike racks and U-shaped bicycle racks have typically been used for bicycle parking on a mass scale.

Those types of commercial bike racks do an adequate job. Certainly better than the old-fashioned grid racks. However, in reality, there are issues.

With a next-generation design, the UpLift bike dock addresses those issues.

The UpLift bike parking rack has a modular high-density design that provides a way to park a number of bicycles in different configurations

For example, one major problem with wave and U-racks is that bicyclists don't use them correctly. The bikes might be locked to the rack, but then they fall or tip over to one side.

This causes a number of problems. First off, a tipped-over bike makes it difficult for a person to lock their bicycle to the same rack. Now multiply this by several instances. All of a sudden, a 15-bike wave rack now only accommodates five or six bicycles.

Another issue is perception. When a bicyclist sees a big, disorganized mess of bicycles, they may be discouraged about riding their bike to class. They don't want to see their bike knocked to the side or another bike falling on top of theirs and damaging it.

Or, they might decide to instead lock their bicycle to a tree or a guardrail, creating a hazard.

Which brings up another issue. Disorganized bikes laying on the ground create a tripping hazard. Bicycle riders have to step over fallen bikes to get to the sidewalk. Pedestrians could trip over a mislaid bike.

With the UpLift bike dock, bicycles can't fall or tip over. There are wheel troughs at the bottom of the rack that hold the bicycle in place. A bicyclist places the wheel in the trough to keep the bicycle upright and straight.

There is also a sizable space up higher for the locking arms. The U-lock is inserted in the locking arm to also keep the bicycle vertical.

This takes bicycle parking to another level.

Planners will love this next aspect of the UpLift design. The UpLift wheel troughs and locking arms are staggered in height. Because of this feature, more bicycles can be parked next to each other while avoiding metal-to-metal and handlebar-to-handlebar conflict.

The UpLift takes up a much smaller spatial area than a traditional bike parking rack. That's a planner's dream.

And because the UpLift bike parking rack comes in one unit for two bikes, it has a modular design for curved spaces, small spaces, etc.

"The UpLift takes bicycle planning to a new level of efficiency," said Michael Kilmartin, Senior Executive with The Park and Facilities Catalog. "We would be glad to demonstrate to university representatives how this type of bike dock keeps bikes organized and allows you to park more bicycles per square foot."

As you can see by the infographic above, there is a better alternative for bicycle parking racks on college campuses.

If any representative of a qualified college or university is interested, The Park and Facilities Catalog would be glad to send a few samples of The UpLift so they can see the spatial efficiency firsthand.

Campus bicycle parking doesn't have to be sloppy or disorganized. The UpLift bike dock is the next-generation bicycle rack that provides a new wave solution.

By the way, if you are looking for bicycles that are better for riding to class, check out this helpful list of best bikes for college here.