Sustrans campaign - Cycle to Work standards

deadhead1971

http://www.sustrans.org.uk/cycletowork

This looks worthy of support. Sustrans want there to be standards in place for employers to meet, to make it easier for more staff to cycle to work.

slowbike

A cycle-to-work standard should include:
1) Adequate bike parking
2) Showering facilities
3) Lockers
4) Buy a bike through work
5) Incentivised business travel by bike
6) Maps and information on safe routes
7) Basic stuff for staff to borrow: locks, lights, waterproofs
8) A group of cycling colleagues available for help and advice

1 - yup agreed
2 - ideally - or just sensible changing facilities
3 - not always required - I don't - it just goes in my office ... but then we have space around us.
4 - yup - that'd help
5 - I don't business travel by car !
6 - eh?! Businesses are going to have to advise their employees on routes to take?! That's hardly what they're there for! Fine if a group in the co want to get together and draw up this sort of thing ...
7 - Locks, ok; lights - er, should be provided by the rider - waterproofs wtf! again - fine if a group want to collate a spares locker and I like the co providing a basic workshop (pump & basic tools) - but again, the group could do that.
8 - Peer assistance - that's what is needed...

Sustrans seems to be aiming this at larger employers - not SMB where we generally cope with this sort of thing between ourselves ...

cedargreen

I'm always a bit wary of Sustrans 'campaigns'- Sustrans is not actually a campaign organisation though it likes to present itself as the voice of cycling. Sustrans has successfully persuaded successive governments to give it relatively large amounts of funding (tiny compared with the roads budget of course), in return for which we get lots of off-road 'routes' along old railway lines from the middle of nowhere to the back of beyond, and the govt can claim it's doing something for cycling and sustainable transport.

Sustrans is not remotely interested in campaigning for better on road conditions for cyclists, because that would put it in conflict with the Dept for Transport etc and would be biting the hand that feeds it. Sustrans is not democratic- members have no say in policy or campaigns and it's off-road routes agenda fits perfectly with the vested interests who want to keep cyclists off the roads and out of the way of speeding traffic.

This particular 'campaign' looks like another attempt by Sustrans to present itself as a campaigning organisation, while doing nothing to tackle the fundamental barrier to getting more people cycling i.e. improving on-road conditions.

In any case I'm not sure how you would set standards for workplace cycle parking. For example, I work at a large hospital in London where dozens of people cycle to work and have quite large cycle parking. But a small hospital in a town with low levels of cycling would need much less- is Sustrans going to develop a formula to work out how much cycle parking each workplace needs, depending on size/ location/ number of empolyees/ travel to work patterns/ distance travelled/ levels of cycling etc etc etc? Of course not, but Sustrans isn't genuinely interested in how to improve conditions for cycling in the real world. Ignore these shysters who are part of the problem, not the solution.