sidewalk bike racks

Custom outdoor bike racks in Palm Springs, CA

Outdoor bike racks with a custom motif can add panache to any town.

Take Palm Springs, CA, for example.

This city of 45,000 is not only a physical oasis in the middle of the desert but a cultural one as well.

For that reason, when city officials decided to add outdoor bike racks, they choose a design that was a little different, yet very obvious at the same time.

They installed custom bike racks, in the shape of, well, bicycles.

These artsy sidewalk bike racks are perfect for this artistic town.

Located about 100 miles east of Los Angeles, Palm Springs is a winter retreat featuring a variety of fun things to do. Those activities range from visiting several museums, shopping downtown at antique shops, checking out the Walk of Stars, hanging out at numerous resorts, riding on the longest rotating aerial tram in the world to playing at any one of their 130 golf courses.

It's an exciting place.

So exciting in fact, that it has a history of attracting

The McHenry County College added a custom bike rack to their campus to promote bicycle commuting over car driving

There's a quiet movement taking place on college campuses across the US that will have a tremendous impact on changing attitudes in the future about our planet's resources.

That movement involves the creation of sustainability departments on nearly every college campus these past 10 years and their efforts to implement and promote best practices to reduce our impact on the Earth.

Sustainability, according to a definition created by the United Nations and adopted by many organizations is basically: "Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own needs."

In other words, don't grab up resources today so there's nothing left for our children tomorrow.

Some of the ways that colleges accomplish this is by focusing on activities such as:

Constructing "green" buildings or retrofitting buildings to be LEED certified

Custom bike rack in Laramie Wyo. designed by artist Meg Thompson (Source: Laramie Main Street Alliance

It's a very simple formula for towns to attract business and add a little zest to the landscape - install artistic custom bike racks.

With today's advances in bicycle parking manufacturing, more and more municipalities and downtown development associations are discovering that they can easily feature a bunch of artistic bike racks on their sidewalks.

This immediately creates a buzz that brings in shoppers and creates a newfound sense of pride from residents.

The manufacturing of bike racks has made incredible advances in the past few decades. Rather than ordering a plain old grid-style bike rack, towns can now liven up their streets with butterflies, flowers, dinosaurs, fish, rabbits, mountain ranges, you name it.

In essence, an artsy outdoor bike rack can literally be created for whatever image you can imagine.

Think of the many benefits:

Instant Street Art - years ago, local towns might