With entries from around the Bay Area as well as Slovenia, Spain, India, and Iran, a team from San Francisco’s Academy of Art University has won the student competition to design a portable bicycle corral for the City’s Yerba Buena neighborhood, designed to meet the growing demand for bike parking at cultural and special events.
The winning design (click image above to enlarge), “Pedalution,” incorporates a foldable bicycle rack on recycled rubber casters for easy transport by one or two people. The design guidelines required the unit to be moved by 1-2 people, secure, easily compressed, visually engaging, easy to use by cyclists, and built for under $10,000.
The four other finalists’ designs from three other teams at the Academy of Art (Stop-n-Lock, Park-Kit, and BAMdesign) and San Jose State University (reCYCLE), click to enlarge:






First Of 250 New “Artful” Yerba Buena Bicycle Racks Unveiled [SocketSite]

4 thoughts on “SF Team Pedals Away With Portable Bike Corral Competition Win”
  1. Why do they need to be portable? There should be lots of permanent parking– parking meters and signposts are good where they already exist, and add some decorative bollards where they do not.
    For major events, staffed bike parking is probably cheaper than trying to bring out enough racks for everybody.

  2. It seems like a rack which is foldable and portable by two people makes it easy to steal even with one or two bikes on it. How is it secure? There used to be movable racks. They have been replaced with racks which are bolted because they were not secure. Why go back to something which doesn’t work?

  3. Perhaps these racks are intended to be used in semi-monitored situations where a couple of people absconding with a rack+bike would be noticed. Think events out at the polo fields for example. It might be possible to swipe a folded and empty rack without raising suspicion though.

  4. UPDATE: The “BAMdesign” entry was originally misattributed to a team from UC Berkeley, credit belongs to a fourth Academy of Art University team and has since been corrected above.

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