How can you provide secure bike storage for cyclists in business areas?

Like this bike rack. There are several commercial racks available. Our city placed several similar to these by library and elsewhere downtown.

In the Netherlands, they have secure bicycle parking garages in most cities. I don’t know of anything like that in the US. The Dutch are serious about their bikes!

@Tropical_Willie

The problem with any rack is that you have to remove anything valuable on your bike and take it with you.

Bikelid is kind of turtle shell bike rack. You lift the shell, place your bike inside, and close the shell. You lock it down with your regular U-Lock or cable lock.
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Bike lockers
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Japan, of course, has the ZOMG WTF solution. Robot-powered underground bike parking!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE4fvwTBtno

Bikelid type and bike lockers like these are available at the colleges here.

@YARNLADY, @jaytkay, those lockers look pretty good! Plus they keep the bikes dry in wet weather, which would be a nice plus!

@jaytkay, that robotic parking garage is amazing. I wonder how many bikes they can fit per square foot? Seems like something like that could be built into parking garage structures.

@crisw, my daughter was in the Netherlands last summer and was impressed by the ease with which a bike could be used as a primary form of transportation. She and her host went out to dinner on a single bike, my daughter riding on the handlebars.

@BarnacleBill Reading more about the robot bike garage, they have built one for 6,000 bikes. And the footprint is small, because the parking is underground. The visible part is just the elevator in the video.

Has Japan designed the world’s best bike shed?

@jaytkay, I wonder if it could be built above ground, like a clear glass silo, on the corner of a flat parking lot? That would be cool, instead of sending the bikes down, you could see them go up. I wonder if there’s something that could go into strip malls or groceries? I was envisioning bikes up near the ceiling somehow, like something will chains and pulleys that take it up. The ceiling’s wasted space in lots of buildings.

I wonder if it could be built above ground, like a clear glass silo, on the corner of a flat parking lot?

I don’t see why not. It’s like a silo. It seems going up would not be much different than going down.
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Back in the day [4 years ago] when I use to steal bikes for kicks and sell them, we could easily snap a chain from bike racks like @Tropical_Willie has pointed out.

If I had to choose, I’d rather use something like a garage or something that locks in the whole frame + tires of a bike. Most gangs/people would be afraid to stick around longer then 5 minutes to steal a bike.

Never ride a bicycle that you would ever let out of your sight.