Putting locks to good use

Check out this Slate story about what some major cities are doing to improve bike parking. It's good to see efforts being made on this front. Nothing is more annoying than struggling to find a place to lock up your bike properly. Well, actually more annoying is coming back to that spot you found and discovering that someone has revealed it wasn't such a good location at all and they've made off with your bike.

While I lived in Charlotte bike parking was pretty lacking, luckily so were cyclists, meaning you pretty much always had the pick of the best spots. (Thomas St. Tavern blew my mind, a bar with a bike rack? Awesome!) Things are changing though, more and more people are getting on their bikes and that's a good problem in my mind. Now that I live in Seattle it seems like bike parking is fairly abundant, but honestly I would not say I've done enough cycling to say so for sure. But the few places I have gone where I needed to lock up I've always found an opening on a bike rack (or "staple" as the Slate article calls them).

The story's mention of the stimulus package reminded about the tax break for employers who give money to help defer bike commuting costs to their bike commuting employees. I'm curious about how this program is working. And maybe at some point I'll even investigate or (google) to see if any companies are actually using this. Of course these days, few companies still have any employees left, so maybe the program will be better measured if we one day again have an economy that employs workers.