What went wrong?

Almost two years ago a bicycle parking garage in Gamlestaden, Gothenburg, opened. About a week before the bicycle parking garage was officially opened I sneaked inside to check it out, and was really impressed.

The garage, the building itself, was really cool, it was good architecture. And still is. Big up to the architect Malin Landh.

Malin Landh works at Sweco, by the way. (Or maybe worked, I don't know.) Which is kind of interesting. Obviously there are some good architects working at Sweco, but Sweco was also responsible for the town hall/railway station house in Växjö. When the municipality of Växjö was to build a new town hall/railway station house they organised a competition, which was won by the White arkitekter architectural firm, with this entry:

(I borrowed this picture from Arkitekten.se. Hope that's OK!)

  

I thought it was a really good entry. But then the commission to build the building was assigned to Sweco. (I'm not going to go into why. If you're really interested google it. Or write to me and ask, and I'll tell you why!) And Sweco came in with an "interpretation" of the winning entry, that was so bad that the town architect in Växjö refused to accept it. I understand town architect Henrik Wibroe completely, Sweco's interpretation of White's winning entry was hideous. (And, apparently, White's winning entry was too costly to be realised.)

So now that the building is finally built it looks like this:

(I borrowed this picture from Vxonews. Hope that's OK!)

Which is OK... ish. Kind of. It could have been so much better, though!

But anyway, the bicycle parking garage in Gamlestaden... I was impressed! It looked cool, the light inside the building was super nice thanks to the screen walls, and there were plenty of parking places for bicycles. About 600 of them, actually.

But about two years later it looks like this:

About 20 bicycles, and a handful of wrecks, butchered ("stripped" doesn't quite cover how I feel) bicycles. And there were no bicycles parked on the lower floor, and one rusty old bicycle parked on the upper floor. To be fair, the photo was taken on a holiday, so perhaps there were less bicycles there than it usually is.

But it's not a bicycle parking garage, it's a working space for bicycle thieves! I would never park any of my bicycles there!

Note the butchered bicycle to the right? It's a pretty good bicycle, a Nishiki Race Hybrid Comp. It's not a great bicycle, but a solid, good one, in good condition, except, of course, it's missing parts. I took it home, and today I took it to the lost property office at the police and handed it in, so that the owner can have the bicycle back.

And thing is, it's not the first bike that I have found here that I have handed in to the police. Last fall I found two Merida 29" mountainbikes, whole, functioning, a bit dirty but in good condition, just standing there without locks or anything. Had the bicycle thieves just put them there, to come back and pick them up later?

So what has happened? This bicycle parking garage feels like a complete failure - why?

Perhaps my next blog entry should be about bicycle locks. Our family has about eleven bicycles (depending on how you count) and 26 bicycles locks, and as I'm planning to get a new bicycle I will buy at least two more locks. So I'm becoming quite the expert on locks.

(I borrowed this picture from The Best Bike Lock. I hope that's OK! And please note that I'm sponsored by neither The Best Bike Lock nor anyone else. And I don't know if The Best Bike Lock really have the best bike locks or not. Are they sponsored? I don't know!)

Ride safe!