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Resources from PlayCore’s Center for Outreach Research & Education

Shift Into Gear®

A Bicycling Advocacy Resource

The benefits of cycling are extensive; it benefits people’s health and fitness, promotes societal and community capital, provides economic benefits to the area, enhances the transportation alternatives individuals can choose, and protects the environment. Today, advocating for and building cycling infrastructure is more important than ever.

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CEU Education

CORE’s Professional Development Hub combines research and resources to offer world-class learning opportunities where professionals can share learnings and earn Continuing Education Units (CEUs) through a variety of tailored events and diverse topics through informative, online webinars.

Check out the current offering of courses at education.playcore.com and use “BIKE” as your registration code.


Recording / Lunch Brake: What to Know About Short-Term Bike Parking

Short-term bike parking is an easy enough concept to understand. If someone needs to park their bike for less than two hours, it’s considered short-term. So why is the mark often missed? This session will help practitioners to plan bike parking for shoppers, diners, errand runners, visitors, students, sports fans, concertgoers, and much more. The session will include benefits of short-term parking, design strategies, and fundamental approaches to comprehensive short-term bike parking standards.

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Recording / Don’t Fear Commitment: Successful Long-Term Bike Parking

When a bike commuter or person running errands by bike sizes up parking locations, the length of time they intend to park may inform where they choose to visit. If bicyclists anticipate to park for more than two hours, priorities will likely shift. Among others, some of the consideration’s individuals will make when selecting bike parking might include the convenience of the location, bike ease of usage, security levels of the location, and how well protected it is from the elements. During this session, you will learn more about how selecting the right equipment helps adequately prepare the space, taking into account the user and their needs, to create a space where people will stay for longer periods of time.

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Tips

Exploring Your Bike Rack Mounting Options

Lay a Good Foundation

Your bike rack’s mount is literally the foundation of the bike parking experience, and choosing the appropriate mounting option for your conditions is a crucial step for ensuring a successful and secure installation.

Best Surface = Concrete

Concrete is easily the best material for bike rack installations and all our standard racks can be mounted to an existing pad via the surface mount option. If existing concrete is not available, many of our products have an in-ground option where the rack is embedded into a newly poured concrete footing. In this method, the wet concrete solidifies around the peg and hollow opening at the base of the bike rack to prevent it from lifting out of the ground or spinning.

bike rack leaning over
Surface Mount
bike rack leaning over
In-Ground Mount

Options for Other Surfaces

Other material like pavers, asphalt, and even organic surfaces like mulch and dirt present more challenging conditions. Directly bolting to any of these materials is not recommended. Asphalt is very malleable and can become too pliant in the hot summer sun to provide lasting security. Pavers are prone to chipping and breaking; and because pavers are not always securely bound to each other any rack installed to them can cause the individual pavers to pop out. For theses challenging surfaces, we recommend a rail mounted multiple rack option like the one pictured below. Rail mounted racks may be left freestanding, but ideally are anchored for greater security.

bike rack leaning over
Anchors may tear out of soft asphalt
bike rack leaning over
Rail mounted racks on top of pavers

More Resources

For a fully detailed approach to mounting options, check out our Bike Parking Guide and be sure to follow us on social for more bike parking content.