I've identified a need locally. It doesn't require government funding. But I still have a lot to learn about bike rack best practices and I haven't ridden in a lot of years. I pretty much walk everywhere.
What I see in my city is mostly geared towards safety, not so much bike racks. Some of it focuses upon infrastructure that makes life safer for cyclists, pedestrians, and motorists. Some of it is directed towards people who bike, such as road safety courses and bicycle lighting.
With respect to bike racks, the emphasis seems to be on gaining business support. Places are more welcoming if they depend upon pedestrians and cyclists, are high traffic, and have limited parking. Local businesses also seem to be more bike friendly than regional, national, or multinational ones.
On that note, how businesses differentiate themselves seem to reflect how welcoming they are to clients who use bikes. Cafe's are more welcoming than coffee shops, recreation centres are more welcoming than gyms.
Also, traditional bike racks are out of favour in my neck of the woods. It's more common to see posts where two bikes can be locked up parallel to the street, or placed three feet apart when bikes are parallel to each other. Even the simplest ones are painted so they are more visually appealing, some have a more artistic flare. Traditional racks tend to be used in bike corrals. Those are typically a barricaded off on-street parking space for bike parking, with the barricades being decorated to fit into the community (e.g. paintings, flowerbeds). The basic idea seems to be that bike racks are more appealing to everyone if they aren't a tangled mess of bikes.
I am still researching bicycle racks, among other things. I am fortunate to be in a historica, walkable, mixed-use downtown area with "scenic" highways running through it. In other words, old-fashioned highways where bikes are permitted, not limited-access freeways where bikes are Verboten.
So we already have cyclists coming through here in spite of the lack of bike racks. I talked to a group that began in Seattle and said they were heading up around the Olympic Peninsula and down to San Francisco. So they are traveling quite the distance because of existing infrastructure and interest.
I already take photos of the area and post them online in a forum I run, which is what sparked me to think up this project. I now have a new goal of documenting bike racks and potential bike rack sites. I will develop things from there.
My unsolicited opinion: I love the plain and simple single upside down U.
My unsolicited rant: I’ve seen and attempted to use many variations, and anything more or less than a single upside down U is always worse.
- usage of space: “racks” that are intended to be used for lots of bikes almost never work out. An upside down u fits two bikes. Simply installing more U’s will have a better outcome than a single “multi-bike” rack because the racks almost never work as advertised - inevitably someone has a kids seat attached to their bike, or a trailer, or a taller bike or shorter bike, or whatever, and then they just end up using the two sides, or going across the whole rack, so all the middle space is wasted space anyway.
- security (eg is it the right height/width/length that I can fit my lock, and lock up all the parts of my bike, not just the wheel). With the U rack, yes, otherwise, almost never as good, and often much worse.
ergonomics - can I easily get my lock around the rack and my bike, lean my bike against it)
I’ll grant that maybe you want to sacrifice utility for a particular “look” but please do so carefully and deliberately. Good luck!!