posted by [identity profile] damerell.livejournal.com at 06:52pm on 16/04/2007
It was not any kind of D-lock - I was just saying I might start using one of each type. It was a cable lock - the Abus Millennio 894 appears to be the same lock.

I almost never leave the Brompton outside anywhere - I think that's the answer.
 
posted by [identity profile] robhu.livejournal.com at 07:08pm on 16/04/2007
Ah, thats very similar to my cable lock.

I think two locks is a good idea. That Kryptonite lock was recommended a lot on the sites I looked at. It is very heavy though, so you have to either just use it for the one place you cycle to (e.g. I go swimming a lot) or be prepared to carry it around with you.

At one of the car parks in Cambridge is a 'secure bike park' area (with CCTV etc). It has these big upside down U shaped things that go into concrete. You lock your bike to the U. Yesterday I saw what I can only assume meant someone left an expensive bike locked up properly to one of these Us. The Us are bolted (with very long) bolts into the concrete rather than being sunken in somehow. Someone must have brought some very tall jack. They'd jacked the U out of the ground rather than break the locks!

I think if you have a really good D lock and a chain lock and you're leaving it somewhere public during the day you're fine, but other than that it comes in with me :-)
 
posted by [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/ at 09:14pm on 16/04/2007
Obviously very securely supervised over the CCTV then.
*spit*
 
posted by [identity profile] robhu.livejournal.com at 09:16pm on 16/04/2007
AFAIK CCTV cameras serve the purpose of making people who don't know any better feel more secure.
 
posted by [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/ at 09:21pm on 16/04/2007
Indeed, but my taxes paid for that car park space to be converted into a secluded place to put determined effort into stealing a bike, as well as for the CCTV to not prevent it.
 
posted by [identity profile] robhu.livejournal.com at 09:27pm on 16/04/2007
Honestly I think the council or the people who own the car park (who may be the same or almost the same) did a fairly good job. The whole place looks pretty secure, and at the end of the day maybe they would have used some other means to just cut the U in half or something had they gone even further.

It is a bit of an obvious flaw that the Us are bolted into the ground rather than being sunk into the concrete itself. Would it have made much of a difference if they had been? Maybe, I'm not an engineer so I don't know (I expect so). OTOH maybe the concrete already existed at that point and the council thought that spending more on smashing it up / closing that entrance to the swimming pool was not a good trade off of your tax money given that the level of security is already 'high' (relatively speaking).

Do I sound like a council apologist? I feel kinda sorry for them, at the end of the day if you leave your bike in a place where thieves can come and do stuff to it for 10 minutes it's going to get stolen no matter what you do. I feel it provides a high level of security during the day but it's not a good place to leave it overnight.

In fact I don't think it's safe to leave your bike anywhere overnight in cambridge. I've seen lots of bikes locked up adequately but with the wheels terribly bent. I can only assume some people think it's fun to break tires. Probably from the group of people that come out of bars and clubs late at night.
 
posted by [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/ at 09:35pm on 16/04/2007
There's more than one "secure" bike park then, I was thinking of the one in Park Street car park. The concrete did exist already, the space was converted out of the vehicle parking, so cutting a hole in it to embed a piece of metal could be difficult (and damage the reinforcing in the concrete).
I remain unimpressed that the "secure" bike park still allows people to come in with heavy equipment and work with it awhile and get away with it. That ain't secure.
 
posted by [identity profile] robhu.livejournal.com at 09:37pm on 16/04/2007
Aha. This is not the specially made secure bike park. This is a car park next to the swimming baths at Gonville place. It's a 'secure cycle park' area.
 
posted by [identity profile] stephdairy.livejournal.com at 08:14am on 17/04/2007
That place is dingy and the CCTV camera has been broken (pointing straight down at the wall rather than at the bikes) for at least a year now.

(S)

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