New York's CityRacks Design contest

Certain items of street furniture take on an iconic stature. When one sees a Red Telephone Box, it's impossible not to think of London (which must be the only place Superman can think of living these days).The Paris Metro sign is equal in its stature.

New York City is having a design competition to move their CityRacks bike parking from the ultra-functional inverted U to something spectacular, something they hope will become a symbol of New York and instantly recognizable.

These simple racks have served us well for the past 10 years. But as we look to make even greater strides in increasing the number of cyclists we need something more. We need something that is functional while simultaneously capturing the attention and imagination of New Yorkers. To supplement our CityRacks, we also seek to promote off-street parking inside buildings to make it even easier for New Yorkers to take up the two-wheel commute.

On behalf of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the Department of Transportation is proud to be sponsoring this design competition with our partner the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and the support of Google and Transportation Alternatives. It represents an important step forward in re-envisioning the New York cycling experience and the streetscape of our City. The winning design will have a far-reaching impact not only on the sidewalks and streets of the greatest city in the world, but on how our City thinks about transportation and the environment.

They got over 1200 entries. With the large art community in NYC, it'll be interesting to see what they come up with.

DC's bike racks could use a little sprucing up, and not with the DDOT symbol (though those are cool in their own way). Here are some cool non-standard designs. There is a new artsy bike rack on 7th Street SE just south of Eastern Market. It's a brushed steal sculpture of a bike.

Comments

[Lee Watkins]

http://bp2.blogger.com/_kSNVKrktKUQ/R8aFuFq603I/AAAAAAAAA3c/UqU72OCmbFk/s1600-h/vd_003.jpg

[Lee Watkins]

I don't really get the fascination with bike racks as entertainment, in and of themselves... and typically these only have a few bikes on them, if any. There is a rack that looks like a bike at my work, but nobody has ever used it. Instead everyone locks to long ugly comb rack because it holds more bikes. I'm all for anything that holds lots of bikes. The mass of bikes itself should be a celebration, not the rack. What would be worth celebrating would be to get all those racks out in the street where parking belongs - not blocking foot traffic.