[BIKE] Bike Locker Makers Respond to 9/11 Challenge

[John Boyle]

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ENTERPRISE 
By GWENDOLYN BOUNDS 

Bike-Locker Makers Respond
Creatively to 9/11 Challenge
August 10, 2004; Page B1

Soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Tom Volk began hearing disturbing
news from the nation's commuter-transit systems. Security officials were
considering eliminating bicycle lockers at rail and bus stations because
they feared terrorists might use them to hide a bomb.

As owner of American Bicycle Security Co. in Santa Paula, Calif., Mr. Volk
made a living out of making opaque, 16-square-foot fiberglass lockers
purchased by transit authorities to serve commuters who bicycle to stations,
as well as by companies for use by their cycling employees. The problem was
that a locker's primary design mission had always been to protect bikes from
thieves, which meant concealing what was inside.

"You couldn't tell if a bike [in a locker] was worth $5 or $5,000," says Mr.
Volk, whose 18-year-old company had $1.2 million in revenue last year. "The
mission was out-of-sight, out-of-mind."
But as officials from the U.S. Federal Transit Administration descended on
major transit hubs, they advised authorities to consider not only relocating
lockers away from boarding areas but also finding a way to visually inspect
inside lockers -- without opening them. Slowly word came back to Mr. Volk
from cities ranging from Miami to Portland, Ore.: No view, no lockers.

How Mr. Volk and other locker makers redesigned their wares demonstrates a
delicate balancing act of meeting new security demands without defeating a
product's core function. It also is an example of how the events of Sept. 11
trickled down to some unlikely segments of American commerce -- and in this
case, triggered a response that could defend against future terrorism.

Among the solutions from locker-makers: windows, side panels and portholes
made of perforated steel or hard see-through plastic. The manufacturers also
began advocating tighter control over who rents lockers and how. "We believe
that every transit agency should be vigilant on how they give keys to
users," says Richard Hartger, president of Cycle-Safe Inc. in Grand Rapids,
Mich., which has been selling lockers for 25 years.

Some bike lockers now have tough plastic viewing windows so authorities can
check out the contents.

In many ways, bicycle lockers are unusual for having weathered decades of
public-locker backlash. The first test occurred after a bomb exploded at the
main terminal of New York's LaGuardia Airport on Dec. 29, 1975, from inside
a coin-operated locker designed for storage of luggage and other personal
items. Eleven people were killed and more than 70 injured; the Port
Authority of New York & New Jersey, which operates the airport, soon ripped
out every public locker at LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy International and
Newark Liberty International airports.

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks provided another reason to remove luggage
lockers, even though the FTA and the Department of Homeland Security don't
specifically forbid lockers of any type. Many airports, such as Miami
International, Washington Dulles International Airport and Ronald Reagan
Washington National Airport, as well as public-transit hubs including Grand
Central Terminal in New York, no longer offer any lockers.

But at many major commuter train and bus arteries, such as in Portland and
Washington, D.C., bike lockers still abound. That mostly is a function of
municipalities' desire to promote cycling as an environment-friendly,
traffic-reducing alternative to cars. "We have quite the cycling community,"
says Adam Argo, project planner for Oregon's TriMet Transportation District,
which serves a population of 1.4 million and maintains 320 bike-locker
spaces. "Riders want to use our transit system to get around with their bike
and not need a car."

Rather than rip out and replace its old American Bicycle Security models,
Mr. Argo's agency asked the company if it could retrofit them. To satisfy
the request, Mr. Volk and his team resurrected an old ABS model with windows
they had developed years earlier to little fanfare (or sales) to keep the
homeless from using lockers for beds. Working from that, he retooled his
machines and molds to produce a door with a hard-plastic window. TriMet then
swapped out the doors on its ABS lockers. The transit agency also
retrofitted other lockers from a rival manufacturer, Creative Pipe Inc. of
Rancho Mirage, Calif., with either perforated stainless-steel doors or
windows. Total cost of the overhaul for both brands: $50,000.

In Charlotte, N.C., where construction begins this fall on a new light-rail
line, transit-planning officials crawled inside sample lockers from
different makers and had police examine them from all angles for visibility
before placing an initial order of 32 lockers from ABS. (The company's
"Safety-View" feature adds about $750 to the typical $1,000 cost of a
locker.) Charlotte security personnel also rejected a less-transparent
prototype from another company that was favored by cycling advocates because
police couldn't see the locker's contents from inside a patrol car.
"The perfect solution for us is a glass box," says Andy Mock, station design
manager in Charlotte. "We set the ground rules early with bicycle advocacy
groups that visibility was not negotiable in this day and age."

Meantime, at locker maker Creative Pipe, a staff of 50 worked around the
clock for six weeks to develop a perforated steel mesh pattern that provided
suitable visibility, without the holes being big enough to allow a thief or
vandal to slip in a pair of cutters to snip through the mesh. They tried
several patterns, snipping and reshaping until they arrived at the formula
of 3/8-inch diameter holes staggered a half-inch apart.

"I had never put in a viewing window or sold a perforated steel locker prior
to 9/11," says Creative Pipe owner Mark Pappas. Among his sales of such
models, he says: 280 to San Francisco's transit system at a cost of about
$1,200 to $1,600 a pop. At this point, "public welfare and safety is more
important than whether a thief knows if a $3,000 or a $50 bike is in there,"
he says.
Not all makers think this is the best road to take. "Visibility is calling
into question the quality of the unit," says Mr. Hartger, Cycle-Safe's
president. "Someone can spray-paint the bike through the mesh [though he
knows of no such incidents having been reported]. And there are issues of
humidity and rainfall." Instead, his company is pushing tighter control over
who rents lockers by encouraging transit authorities to collect more
personal information, such as phone number, place of work, credit-card
number and other data. Still, Mr. Hartger says his company will offer a
locker-viewing solution for those who request it.

How bike lockers get rented differs by locale. At the Metro rail and bus
system in Washington, D.C., cyclists pay $70 a year plus a $7 key deposit to
use lockers, which are located at more than half the line's stations. In
Portland, riders pay a one-time $50 fee for unlimited use of a locker,
although because of high demand planners are experimenting with letting
cyclists access lockers on a first-come, first-serve basis using their own
padlock.

Meantime, ABS and Creative Pipe have developed electronic locks that they
hope will leave an audit trail if something bad happens. On the Creative
Pipe model, cyclists use cellphones to call a number listed on the locker;
the call is then routed to an automated data center in Denver. Cyclists are
asked to punch in the locker's ID and a credit-card number before being
given a special key code to unlock the locker. "These have become a big deal
after 9/11," says Creative Pipe's chief Mr. Pappas, "because in a lot of
places where users supply their own lock, some guy could just throw a bomb
in and lock it."
For the immediate future, however, locker visibility remains a main line of
defense. Miami Dade Transit officials have plans for 198 lockers -- all with
views -- along their rail and bus system, beginning with 10 near a downtown
government center.

Visible lockers will account for 65% to 75% of Creative Pipe's total $2
million in locker sales this year, the company estimates. Mr. Volk of ABS
says: "Visibility has allowed us to continue selling a product where it may
not [have been] feasible if all we had was the traditional locker."

Even cyclists are starting to take it in stride. "It's better than not
having lockers at all," muses Ellen Fletcher, a 75-year-old vice president
of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition. Adds Herb Brown, chairman of
Charlotte's Bicycle Advisory Committee: "We're hoping the lockers will be in
high-enough population areas so that if a thief tries to break into a
locker, someone will see them." Still, the 67-year-old won't be sticking his
$3,800 Specialized-brand road bike into a see-through locker anytime soon.
"Only my cheaper $800 Schwinn," he says.



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