I’ve seen a lot of backyard bike sheds over the years. And even a few folks who’ve installed steel bike staples in their yard. But the small metal shed in the driveway of Sam Balto’s house in northeast Portland is something different. Balto recently installed a “Bikehangar” from a London-based company called Cyclehoop and invited me over to take a look. It’s the first one of its kind being used in Portland.
“We don’t have a garage and we like to ride our bikes a lot, and having to move them in and out constantly really becomes a deterrent to riding,” Balto said, as he unlocked and opened the wide steel door, revealing several bikes inside. “So being able to have secure bike parking in front is really nice and convenient.”
Balto has the Cargo Bikehangar, one of three models offered by Cyclehoop. He said it cost $5,000 to get bought, shipped, and installed (cost can be as much as $7,000 depending on model and other variables). It’s an interesting solution that could expand beyond the use of a single family if the city embraces the concept.
While Cyclehoop started in the United Kingdom, they spun off a separate entity in the United States in 2022. Cyclehoop US has a warehouse and fabrication shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Cyclehoop US CEO Andy Lambert says they’ve worked on installations with the City of Minneapolis, and the Minnesota Twins and Vikings (pro baseball and football teams).
“The response has been really positive from public and private sector customers, including residential homeowners,” Lambert shared with BikePortland today.
The Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) has hundreds of “bike corrals” in parking spots adjacent to businesses citywide. But they don’t have something similar for neighborhood streets. It makes sense in some ways, because business customers usually fit under the definition of short-term parking, which is two hours or less according to PBOT guidelines. And bike corrals in commercial districts have a much higher demand than most Portland neighborhoods. Even so, Balto sees a future where these hangars are shared by several neighbors.
“I was in London a couple years ago and saw them all around the city,” he said. The City of London has contracted with a third-party vendor to manage thousands of Bikehangars. People on a block get access via a secure code on a smartphone app and pay a small fee for the service. In areas with apartments and multi-family dwellings, the hangars have been especially popular, Balto says.
Getting these hangars off private property boundaries and into the street, where PBOT already allows people to park private automobiles, is the next step. Right now that would be illegal without a permit.
Security will also be a big concern if these are to be taken seriously in Portland. Traumatized by years of rampant and brazen bike theft, many folks will be wary of leaving bikes on streets or in front yards in a metal shed. But Lambert says his company does third-party testing and receives the highest ratings. “The testing company uses all of the same power tools that bike thieves commonly use, including angle-grinders, reciprocating saws, crowbars, and anything else you can think of.”
Lambert added that Cyclehoop has 6,000 bike hangers serving 20,000 users in the U.K., and since 2012, bike theft has occurred in less than 1% of all use cases. “We’ve also had hangars on the streets of San Francisco since last June with no problems,” he said. The company recommends locking bikes inside the hangar and is testing a lock that would attach to the racks inside the hangar. They also offer a lock ring anchored to the ground (as seen in video above).
Balto isn’t worried about theft. His day job is to promote and advocate for bike buses and he sees the Bikehangar as a powerful way to get more kids and families riding.
“We want to make it easy for people to bike and store their bikes and lock them up when they go to friends houses, and our current system doesn’t offer that,” he said. “I’ve had students who we’ve been able to give them a bike, but their parents say, ‘we can’t accept it because there’s no room in their apartment complex.’ One of the biggest barriers to communities being able to do bike busses is secure bike parking, and so this is a super easy, affordable way — with some municipal support — to be able to remove barriers to make it easier for children and families to choose biking and instead of driving their kids to school.”
Balto thinks the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund (PCEF) could be a perfect source for funding bike hangars citywide. He wants to do a pilot project this summer where a network of hangars are purchased and installed in a neighborhood and then ridership numbers are tracked. Balto is confident more people will ride with convenient, weatherproof access to their bikes.
What do you think?
Thanks for reading.
BikePortland has served this community with independent community journalism since 2005. We rely on subscriptions from readers like you to survive. Your financial support is vital in keeping this valuable resource alive and well.
Please subscribe today to strengthen and expand our work.
I would buy one in a heartbeat if I could store it in the street the way I can my car. I don’t even have a driveway, and only steps up to my house, so storing it on my property is a non-starter. Right now I park my heavy electric cargobike in the hellstrip chained to a utility pole. Not ideal for weather or security.
Do you bolt your car permanently to the street?
Do you need to? Most cars built in the last twenty years (with a few glaring exceptions) have electronic immobilizer devices that prevent theft even if a person is able to destructively gain entry. Not so for bicycles.
That’s the thing. I don’t have to.
Interesting idea but I know people who have had bikes stolen from secure garages so I think bike thieves would figure a way to get in these….
I also would never keep a bike I owned in any community storage where multiple people had access. I am sure some would, not me.
Seems ok to me if you can lock your bike to something solid inside too
Love this concept but I’d really want to see the results of their security tests before I put my “good” bike in there. Looks like you could cut through the legs pretty quickly and take everything inside, but I’d trust them with my commuter, which has zero resale value.
Sadly, thieves wouldn’t realize that until they’d already cut their way into your $5000 bike shed. And then they’d probably take it anyway.
Or, if enough desperate people work together, they could take the structure and move it somewhere else. To live in. Because remember, we’re still in need of affordable housing here.
yes, I was wondering if this might be a weak point in preventing theft, especially if this was in the public ROW and not someone’s driveway. Those battery-operated angle grinders can cut through a u-lock in about a minute, so I imagine the aluminum legs would be pretty easy…
I live in a weird little block long HOA townhome zone with a private drive for parking and I was thinking how great it would be if we could install some kind of bike parking in the lane to make up for the lack of space each house has. This would be an amazing option for that!
Unfortunately, then it becomes a political matter of adjusting the car parking no one will want to give up completely and people who don’t bike not wanting to invest in it, etc. etc.
Would love to slap one of these in the street in front of my house
I recently saw a similar bike storage locker in front of a house and stopped to chat with the owner. He told me that the locker had come with the house and was installed to provide bike parking to the occupant of the ADU. He said that he was looking to get it removed though because he found that bikes stored in the locker in Oregon tended to rust in winter. I’m curious to hear from Sam how this works for them long term, hopefully there will maybe be a followup article in a year or so.
If the alternative is bringing bike in a heated indoor area, it might be a wash. Steel bikes especially don’t like the yoyo of temp.s that can lead to rust due to condensation.
I sometimes think about my steel bike rusting… If it is, it’s inside the tubes and I’ll never know until they fail one day. It’s a 1999 though, and at this point it’s anyone’s guess who fails first, it or me
The weakest point is the seat tube because it’s potentially open at the top. If there’s no drain hole and your bike is out in the weather a lot, you can drill one when you service the bottom bracket (or have it done). If you don’t want to modify the bike, a regular coat of grease on the seat post is always a good idea. Make sure the slot in the seat tube is filled with grease.
Looks great!
But this is inner Portland, so I gotta ask: How much was the city permit for this bolted-down mini-garage? Does it meet city code? Is it at least 5 feet from your neighbor’s property line? Is there a betting pool on how long before one of your neighbors complains to the city’s code enforcement division?
Hey man, your ebike shed is blocking my Sprinter van’s view…
Pretty cool though!
At first glance your comment seems a bit cynical, given that it seems unlikely someone would turn anyone in for that, you don’t need any side setback at all if you’re 40′ back from the front property line, etc.
But where it caught my attention is when you realize how much more lenient (based on a quick review at least) the zoning rules for car parking are compared to those governing this.
Like you said, you DO need a 5′ side setback for this if less than 40′ from the front property line. You even need the 5′ for this low enclosure if it’s behind a 7′ tall side property line fence (legal with no permit) meaning the fact it would be invisible from your neighbor’s is irrelevant.
In contrast, the zoning code treats car storage much more leniently. You can park a car (much taller and longer than the bike container) with ZERO side setback. For that matter, you can build a paved driveway from the sidewalk to your back property line (100′ long on a typical residential lot) with no side setback, and park as many cars as will fit end-to-end (6 or 7) right up to the sidewalk.
If you’re back 40′ from the front property line, you can build a 24′ x 24′ garage with ZERO side or rear setback, with 10′ tall walls. (Granted, you could build that same structure to park bikes in.)
There are thousands of houses in Portland with driveways with two 4′ to 6′ tall, x 12′ to 18′ long, x 6′ wide cars or trucks parked every day, all in locations it would not be legal to put one of these bike enclosures without going through the expensive, time-consuming zoning adjustment process (with no guarantee of success).
So yes, great point!
I lived in Portland for 17 years and served on two different neighborhood associations, both of whom continuously got bent out of shape for the most minor and trivial code violations, so I write from experience, as well as a keen appreciation of your looking up the code on garages. And I have no doubt whatsoever that some busybody from Sam’s neighborhood association will contact the city at some point for some perceived (and likely non-existent) code violation – this is Portland and it’s simply a matter of time – and city inspections are complaint-based. However, I do in fact applaud Sam’s efforts.
Why do people talk as if Portland is the only place people get bent out of shape when their neighbors do something unusual with their real estate?
You can’t put a large portable object in the setback?
If it is bolted down, is it still portable? Or is it a structure?
Zoning code:
It’s “on the ground” but not really “constructed”. My experience is the City doesn’t care about things that aren’t attached to the ground. They might not care about one of these, even if it were attached to anything short of a poured concrete footing–or they might if attached.
It seems if you’re spending $5K for bike storage, you wouldn’t want to risk someone being able to just lift it (before they lift your bikes). But if you say, poured a concrete pad and bolted it to it, you’d also want certainty it was legal.
Seems like it would be better to NOT have an image of a cargo bike on the side of it, letting thieves know a $5000+ cargo ebike might be inside.
You could remove the temptation for thieves pretty easily by painting over the bike silhouette with a picture of a Tesla.
Yeah, Teslas are hard to steal. It’s definitely a plus for them…..especially if one lives in Portland where there are lots of car thefts.
OK
At least it is hail-proof (I see the buildup.on the house roof in the vid.!)
Cool idea Sam but in a city with a $100 million dollar budget deficit and one that still can’t answer 911 calls in a timely fashion I don’t see how the City of Portland can do this. I just want basic essential services to be provided…then we can move on to the cool stuff.
Despite our problems, living in a city with your Trump/Musk like cult vision sounds pretty awful.
Your dear leaders vision for the country that you seem to espouse is circling the drain at present.
LOL, How is wanting a city to be able to provide basic essential services like 911 and police response a Trump/Musk cult vision? I’m not a fan of either of them. Trump is unfortunately both of our “dear leaders” now. I don’t like that—but it’s called democracy. Let’s not try to allow dysfunction in Portland to somehow counteract the Orange Guy in DC.
Buy one or don’t buy one. Why is every bike “solution” ever suggested always attached to some government or quasi-governmental agency for financing, subsidies, etc.? I’m not an uber capitalist but, it seems like safe bike storage is the responsibility of the bike’s owner. Imagine the outcry if Portland handed out taxpayer funds so people could build better, more secure, and more posh private garages for their cars?
Yeah, it seems a portion of the bike portland echo chamber seems to think of bike owners as perpetual victims and a constant need to be dependent on government. Time for a little more personal responsibility in my opinion. How about networking with neighbors for a Neighborhood Watch program instead of having to fortify our front yards?
That’s not much of an echo chamber if only a portion thinks that way.
Government involvement was only a portion of the article. And much of that was about things like allowing bike storage units on public property (as is allowed for cars) vs. direct public funding of storage units.
Two groups I could see getting behind allowing these on public property–even if the units were paid for privately–are building owners and businesses, if they could lessen code requirements for onsite bike parking for businesses and apartments. Developers and business owners are not typically part of the “BikePortland echo chamber”.
Did you notice the person being interviewed paid $5K of his own money (the entire cost) and put the unit on his own property? Isn’t that the epitome
of “personal responsibility”? How is it not better than expecting the City to allow you to park your car on the public street?
When car owners or business owners hit by burglaries and vandalism demand better police response and more locking up of criminals, do you criticize them for asking the government to spend money doing that? Why not?
What about publicly financed parking garages downtown? Why not criticize those drivers and businesses who benefit from those for depending on government for solving their parking problems?
This one really made no sense to me given your “dependent on the government” criticism. “Fortify(ing) our front yards” involves no public money or property. Do you criticize people for building private garages on their own property at their own expense to store their cars? Why not?
Isn’t preventing the crime with a storage structure better than asking your neighbors to patrol the neighborhood and then call the police (i.e. use public resources) to come out and after the property has been stolen?
Car storage units are not generally allowed on public property. You can park a car in many public places, and you can also park a bicycle in many public places. I would be willing to bet that there are far more legal bike parking spots than car parking spots proportional to the number of people who primarily drive vs. primarily ride bikes.
Yes, I meant allowing bike storage units on public property, just as cars are allowed to park on public property. I didn’t mean to imply that people are building garages, carports, etc. on public property.
I also realize it’s likely true that there are “…more legal bike parking spots than car parking spots proportional…” but I was noting what was being mentioned in this article, which was allowing bike storage units on public property.
Surely you agree that parking a vehicle and erecting a structure are very different things. There is no real “just as” comparison to be made between the two.
I actually don’t see that much of a distinction. Parking is just a platform for someone to place a private structure (the car) on public property. The fact that any particular car might move is less relevant than the fact that, if you look at any street parking space, it is generally occupied by private property (the car), which itself generally stores additional private property (all of the stuff you keep in your car). The city uses a ton of public resources for this (in real estate for the space and in money, time, and effort for maintenance).
This thread of comments feels like real status quo blindness to how much the government expends on providing an almost limitless supply of space for the private storage of cars at either no cost or very low cost to the owners of the car. I wish there was more of an outcry about it, to be honest, and that car owners took “a little more personal responsibility” and paid more for the storage of their private property.
Once you’ve accounted for the need to have a place where vehicles can make deliveries, and for disabled vehicles to get out of the travel lanes, how much does the government actually spend on car parking?
I’d gladly pay fair market value to reserve an on-street parking spot for myself. I once read a proposal to hold an annual auction for individual parking spaces, which I would totally be willing to participate in.
Car stoage on public property is a relevant consideration. The cost of building and maintaining curbside parking might be a relevant comparison.
I agree; that’s why I compared it to bike storage on public property.
I agree they’re very different, but disagree the comparison isn’t valid. The issue is the occupancy of some public street area. That area–about 1/2 of a standard parallel space–could be used for parking part of a car, or some restaurant seating, or a curb extension, or a street tree, or a bioswale, or 1/2 of a delivery space for a business, or 1/2 of a drop-off space for a hotel or daycare, or any of a number of things that are all very unlike one another in almost every respect other than that they’re all seen as valid uses of that 60 sf or so of street area.
I could have included all those in my comment, but I didn’t expect anyone to dissect that small aspect of the sentence fragment that you quoted.
Cars move around and spots can’t be reserved; they simply aren’t the same as semi-permanent structures. That may be one reason the city requires a permit for one and not the other.
I’m not saying bike parking is an invalid use of street space — we have bike corrals and BikeTown parking around, and I don’t see those as a problem. I do have concerns with permanently reserving public space for private use, but would have far fewer with permanently reserving public space for publicly accessible covered bike parking.
That said, if the city allows folks to erect a private storage structure on the street, I might take them up on it.
I agree cars parking are not the same as semi-permanent structures. Things like restaurant seating sheds in the street, or tables on the sidewalk, are probably closer in that regard.
Remember, my comment was a response to Mary S.’s
I was pointing out that car owners expecting to be able to park on the public street is “dependent on government” too. I’ve never been trying to say they’re equivalent, or that there aren’t issues with bike storage units that are different. I wasn’t particularly even trying to say they’re a good idea. I was trying to show that her criticisms of the “bike portland echo chamber” as viewing themselves as “perpetual victims” who need to take “more personal responsibility” were extreme and wrong in my opinion.
Sure — almost every aspect of public infrastructure is “dependent on government” in some sense. Though I could do without the unnecessarily political formulation, it’s hard to disagree with Mary’s larger point that sometimes being the change you want to see in the world is more effective than waiting for someone else to do it for you (and complaining when they inevitably don’t).
I took her point to be exactly what she wrote, not the sanitized, more generalized version you turned it into.
And like I told her, she was aiming it at someone who literally did exactly what your revised version says. He saw what he wanted, did his research, spent $5K of his own money, and then took the initiative to spread the word about it. I don’t see even a hint of complaining, or waiting for others to act.
I’m not actually sure what you think Mary said — reading her comment and the one she was responding to, and then your responses here, makes me think there may be some confusion.
Either way, I have no problem with the bike shed nor with anything Balto said or did. I thought it was an interesting story, and it made me think about whether it could be a solution for me.
No, because it is part of the social contract that the monopoly on violence be held by the state, both from enforcement of the laws and incarceration of criminals. You may be able to imagine how the pursuit of vigilantism in lieu of that structure could go poorly, but maybe it’s high time to run that experiment again.
Of course not, because the businesses and drivers aren’t depending on the government for solving their parking problems. The government is in the business of capturing tax revenue from employees, businesses and real estate (far too much of it, certainly). Without the garage, the density of customers and employees is less, hence, less tax revenue. This is glaringly obvious with the current environment. The experience and convenience of commerce downtown has eroded and the customers and employees have just gone somewhere else, and the garage is still sitting there making no money because the city failed elsewhere.
Obviously a tangent, but Watts adequately addresses the concept that parking a mobile vehicle on the side of a street is much different than putting up a structure, which would also be summarized by the likely annoyance many of the proponents here would feel if someone put up their own bike structure in front of your house to store their private property.
I wouldn’t expect the city to pay for it; but at least allow it on the street.
The city already has a process for siting bike corrals. This seems like a minor evolution of that, with the major (possibly fatal) exception that these are for private use, and are not available to the public like the way, for example, restaruant seating in the street is (at least after hours).
Maybe this is more akin to existing mechanisms for siting bike lockers (which are semi-permanently reserved for individual users).
But either way, it shouldn’t be a huge policy lift to shoehorn these into existing programs, even if the primary beneficiaries are those with $5,000 they are willing and able to dedicate to such a project.
So if the bike’s owner can’t afford a $600,000 home, they should just lock their bike up outside and pull themselves up by their bootstraps when it’s stolen?
Or, you know, just store it inside their home.
Or, you know, live in rental housing where storing your bike indoors is a lease violation.
Good concept.
I saw a lot of these in 2019 in suburban Utrecht, Netherlands. Also Bremen, Germany.
Needs a few modifications to be successful in Portland.
1) build it out of heavy gauge steel. Bolted to the concrete *inside* the structure. So it can’t be levered off. Or cut through, bashed in.
If the manufacturer is shipping them from Minnesota then lightweight is good. If you make them in Portland, for the high bike-theft risk city of Portland, it won’t affect shipping costs to make them really heavy.
2) put beefy bike racks on the inside. Or a giant chain hung or on the floor. So even if thieves cut their way in they’ll still have a difficult time stealing the nicer bikes in the fleet.
3) a solar powered small air circulation fan to keep water from condensing on bikes month after month, year after year.
Seems like a good DiY business opportunity for the ~2010 era Portland “artist/crafty/activist” crowd. And could still be a good business opportunity.
Ted Buehler
TED: great idea about the solar fan!
I wish I could say without reservation that this was an awesome idea.
But I can’t.
In European cities where there’s still a modicum of civility and respect for other people, maybe it works. But bike thieves here are using sawz-alls to cut through steel bike racks.
Also, I cannot help but think that setting up something like this in front of your house, steps from the sidewalk, may be construed as being somewhat tone-deaf depending on the neighborhood. If I were a low-income person struggling to stay employed and housed in a rental, and my neighbor across the street installed one of these in front of a house he was able to own and maintain, how would I feel?
For reasons I can’t quite articulate just now, this custom, purpose-driven structure suggests privilege in a way a simple wooden shed maybe doesn’t.
Maybe it’s a good idea somewhere, but I struggle to see how it could be great in this particular time and city. Even as a pilot project, it runs into the same risks that the Portland Loo has faced, and continues to face. A city planning to install these needs to take the social climate into account before moving ahead.
In New York, 1 in 4 people get bikes stolen. In Amsterdam it’s 1 in 3 (source). There are clearly ways in which Europe functions more like a society than the US, but I wouldn’t use bike theft as the example.
I agree about the tone deafness though
What a bizarre take on this structure. Are you less offended by an SUV or expensive EV parked in driveway? Do you think a low-income person is more offended by this metal shed than an $40-60,000 car of any kind which is normal everywhere.
Any shed is probably better in the backyard for looks and theft concerns but it’s his business.
A person offended by this structure is looking a reason to be offended.
Also a busy body who can have an opinion but suggesting a shed denotes “privilege” sounds like whining from a privileged person.
I think that this is on the ostentatious side personally. That’s an opinion based on the fact that the justification is “it’s a bit of a hassle to move our bikes out of the house since we don’t have a garage”. I wouldn’t personally spend $5,000 on that, but that’s why there isn’t an article about me buying a bike hangar.
Evidently I also think that fancy cars are an ostentatious display of wealth. Same with people who ride the latest and greatest in road bikes.
And people who own ~$14,000 in e-bikes.
Is it anymore tone deaf than parking a car in the same situation?
Beth —
I’m curious why you think this is inappropriate, or “tone deaf”.
Sam invested in his property, making a nice spot to park his mostly-human powered transportation.
Maybe it cost him $5K.
Would you find it inappropriate or tone deaf to:
* spend $5000 on a beat up old SUV to park in the driveway?
* spend $5000 on energy efficient windows on the front of his house?
* spend $10,000 to replace a gas furnace with a heating/cooling heat pump system?
If so, why?
If not, then why is investing in your bicycle fleet inappropriate.
Just curious.
Ted Buehler
(Also, have me met? I often attend BHH, but I’m not sure if you are one of the Beths in occasional attendance there).
I have lived car-free for over thirty years, on a shoestring budget, food stamps and medicaid. I rely on a bicycle or public transit to get around.
I appreciate every effort to promote car-light or car-free living, AND I recognize that people will often do it to be cool *before* they’ll scale down their lives to be more economically fair for everyone. After all, if the super-rich can endlessly acquire cool stuff, why can’t everyone?
I recognize that we have free choice in our society.
I recognize that fairness and sustainability are not baked into in the system we have, and that is by design.
The creation of a $5,000 structure for personal bicycle storage stands in stark contrast to the reality that for too many people, affordable housing is not available — and that there isn’t sufficient political will to build that housing.
I struggle with the imbalance of wealth in this country. I always have and probably always will. I do not believe that anyone should acquire in excess when there are others in our society that cannot afford even to be safely housed and fed.
I fail to see how high-zoot bicycles and high-zoot personal storage structures for them will help to improve that equation.
I believe in a system where the balance of wealth is more equitable so that no one has to suffer, no one has to work themselves to death in order to survive, and no one can gain so much that someone else must lack basic needs.
Call me naive if you like. I can live with that.
At this point in my life, I will not be swayed.
So if own an expensive bicycle you will have less in life?
If I sell it you will have more?
Hi Beth H: Regarding “European cities where there’s still a modicum of civility and respect for other people”…true for most road users but not for EU bike thieves…I have had a similar number of bikes stolen in NL as Cascadia. So ;-(
Yes, one must always invoke Europe as the problem free utopia that it never has been.
More often than not, the loudest voices repeating this stuff have spent just an afternoon on a rental bike in tourist Amsterdam— if they’ve been to Europe at all. It’s embarrassing that we keep treating these experiences as representative of everyday life for the average person in whatever country is the darling of the activist mindset this month
A person could gut an old RV and park it in their driveway for bike storage, because RVs are invisible?
Actually, since the zoning code doesn’t allow an accessory structure (which these storage units are) in the front yard setback, you could get around that by getting a cheap beater RV or van (several times the size of the bike unit and much uglier), parking it in your driveway in the front yard, and storing your bikes in it.
This reminds me of that brief fad in the 1990s (I think) when Portlanders took to using a pickup parked on the street as a gardening bed.
And if any neighbors complain, just claim that a disadvantaged family lives in it and invoke the “housing crisis”. Even the phoniest of privilege checks is enough to shut down rational discourse in Portland. It’s fake empathy weaponized
It looks like two of the four feet of the structure are attached to wooden blocks sitting on turf? I hope that’s not the case…
Thankfully, no. Those look like bricks, which are far more secure.
I’m not so sure about that. Looks pretty easy to just lift and steal. I wouldn’t trust my bikes in that.
I think it’s pretty clear Watts was joking.
This is a really cool idea. I could envision a couple improvements though. It would be great to attach the structure to a flat concrete slab, maybe 4″ thick with 8-12″ footers around the perimeter. Then to improve protection from the elements, the structure could be built out of widely available wood framing members, sheathed, sided/roofed to match the aesthetics of the home, and then if available, one could install a spring loaded retracting door for access/security. Eventually, if technology allows, maybe the door could be automated with a motor and a wireless controller. One could add lights as well, and if the space was made just slightly larger, it could store many other things that one doesn’t want inside their home. Just spit balling.
Just as an aside…in planning for such a service installed within the public rights of way the ‘best’ way to speed installation, increase security and minimize local public works friction may be to install this type of hardware with a baseplate. Much as bikeshare docks (and phone booths, postal collection boxes, etc.) such to avoid drilling / adding footings into the roadway surface and disturbing utilities, plus giving some mass to internally attach the rack or bikes too in case the legs were cut. [The negative of course would be such a base would likely require lifting equipment…but this is worth it if there is a time savings when installing multiple units vs 1 unit.]
Another community’s efforts at a smart bike hanger with App access for shared use. See Don Cicleto’s Bici Hanger of Spain. [I got to try their lockers at VeloCity Lisbon.]
https://www.web.doncicleto.com/producto/bicihangar-rocket/
Thanks for this article, Jonathan. It’s funny to read this article as I am currently dealing with a similar predicament. We have a cargo bike with a kids seat (a Bike Friday Haul-A-Day Elite with a toddler seat on the back, and we LOVE the bike — lightest cargo bike on the market), and for the past 1.5 years, we’ve been carrying it up and downstairs to our basement every day. As we add more to it (like, the front basket), it gets heavier and more precarious/dangerous dragging it up and down the 15 stairs to our basement. It isn’t a great long term solution, but we’re currently stuck on what the best, most cost effective solution is for our situation.
We’ve looked at Tuff Sheds, Shipping Containers, and this exact CycleHoop Cargo Bike Hangar. We have a flat space where we can put something in our backyard, but bike theft is prevalent in our area and we hope to one day buy ebikes to fully replace our car. We’d love to build a ADU with a garage or something nicer, but we don’t have extra cash laying around for the nicest, best long term option.
Tuff sheds look relatively nice and could store a lot of bikes but they are easily broken into. Shipping containers are very sturdy and probably the safest option to protect against bike theft, but they are hideous (and may or may not require renovation to fit our neighborhood “standards”) and what happens in 15-20 years when we want to get rid of it? I can only imagine the cost to dispose of one. And, the Cargo Bike Hangar is a great option, but since it isn’t sealed up, I have concerns about someone taking their tools to one in our neighborhood. Will the bikes rust in it and if we get ebikes, will the moisture affect their electronics?
I’ve also looked into Asgard bike sheds, but as far as I can tell, they are only sold in the UK (maybe the EU, too). Those look like the best, safest, sturdiest option and I can’t really find anything comparable here in Portland.
We’ve also thought about putting a ramp down to our basement, but that would also be cost prohibitive, as far as I can tell. We used to store our bikes in our living room, so we aren’t opposed to living with them, but with a toddler (and stairs to get up the front steps), it would be best if they were out of reach from daily life. Between the three of us, and folks visiting us via bike, we really need something that’s safe, secure, and doesn’t involve us carrying it up and down stairs risking slipping and breaking something.
From the research I’ve done, sheds range from $3k-$10k, shipping containers are $3500 plus delivery, and CycleHoop Cargo Bike Hangars are $6300 plus freight (I actually asked the company today if I could get it for $5k referencing this article and they said no).
It’s great to see what bike storage Sam Balto ultimately chose for his family. I’d love to see how others store their bikes, too, to get more ideas on other options as insufficient bike storage is such a barrier to adopting biking as a primary form of transit. We’ve adapted to our current set up (chose the lightest bikes possible, and hope you don’t miss a step), but it isn’t sustainable long term, and there has to be a better option out there.
Good summary. Please someone figure out how to import the Asgard bike sheds! The basement stairs problem is real. I bought an Oma fiets several years ago and very nearly fell on my head taking it down the basement stairs. Lack of foresight on my part when buying it. It remains in the basement. Lighter bikes are easier, but the need to navigate the basement stairs is still an impediment to cycling.