Paying to park Bike

Small Fish

There's a plan to open a new 'Cycle Hub' near where i work in Salford Quays - offering a nice clean dry well lit secure bike parking for a membership fee of £100 pa - or Parking +locker and shower for £200 per year.

I just cant see there being more than a handful of people who would use such a facility... i don't think the concept offers anything useful to the vast majority of day to day cycle commuters and the precedent of expecting commuters to pay for bike parking is a seriously negative step. (The only positive thing I can imagine is that maybe some employers would pay for spaces for employees.)
Am I missing something... are cycle hubs a good idea?

alan_sherman

There has been some in London for a while.

However Westminster introduced a parking charge for motorbikes parking on the street, so who knows if cycle parking charges might be in some grand plan somewhere. There is a lack of places to leave bikes in some places. Hopefully I'll continue to work for employers who provide cycle parking and showers.

rolf_f

There is such a facility in Leeds (though hampered by lack of lockers - supposedly a security issue!) - this costs about £120 a year, £15 a month or £1 a day. Day parking is during working hours only though so not too useful in my opinion.

I use the facility a fair bit for work. One month bike parking is rather less than one day car parking at the station. It's running at not quite half capacity but Leeds isn't the easiest city for cycling so I'm not surprised.

Ultimately, £1 for a day parking with £500 theft insurance (only three attempted thefts so far - none successful) and someone on hand seems fair enough to me - I wouldn't leave my bike anywhere else public in the city. Of course, this is next to the main railway station. Wouldn't have thought Salford Quays such a useful location.

markhewitt1978

£200 a year is a bit steep, but I would certainly be interested in somewhere you could park securely and use a shower - if the facilities were good. The problem of course is that if it's not right next to where you're going to be working, the extra walking time would make it useless. So it's only really realistic if there are many different sites in a city - hence they would have to be quite small.

asprilla

If I was working over there and my work didn't have secure parking then I'd be signing up like a shot. £200 a year is about a third what H2BikeRun charge when you take locker rental into account.

iPete

If I had to leave my bike outside or wash myself from a sink everyday, I'd sign up. That's a great price.

markhewitt1978

alan sherman wrote:

There has been some in London for a while.

However Westminster introduced a parking charge for motorbikes parking on the street, so who knows if cycle parking charges might be in some grand plan somewhere. There is a lack of places to leave bikes in some places. Hopefully I'll continue to work for employers who provide cycle parking and showers.

With cars or motorbikes you can charge just for the space, with bicycles you have to provide something more, e.g. proper security, lockers, showers etc. It's something multi storey car parks can look at. Most would have the space and the ability to put in a few showers etc.

secretsam

If they offer insurance for your bike whilst it's in their "secure store", then it's worth thinking about. Is each bike in a separate unit, so you don't need a lock, etc? Don't know how much a gym would charge for a 'shower only' membership (some offer this).

rolf_f

SecretSam wrote:

If they offer insurance for your bike whilst it's in their "secure store", then it's worth thinking about. Is each bike in a separate unit, so you don't need a lock, etc? Don't know how much a gym would charge for a 'shower only' membership (some offer this).

Leeds uses two lever racks - fixed ground ones and high level ones you pull out. You are recommended to use a lock though I don't think that not using one invalidates the insurance. And regular users do leave their locks attached to the racks and that isn't minded. Outside of normal hours (about 6 til 6) you can only get in with a pass that you get with monthly or annual membership. It works well. I never worry a bit about leaving my Ribble Gran Fondo there.

markhewitt1978

If only we had something like that on our industrial estate. There is 600+ car parking spaces. The bike facilities amount to a wooden shed with a padlock, with space for about 6 bikes, but only one of the companies is allowed to use it and I don't work for that company.

Agent57

Rolf F wrote:

Wouldn't have thought Salford Quays such a useful location.

For people like me (when I worked at MediaCityUK), it would have made sense. Train to Oxford Road, then ride from MCO to MCUK. The trams are a bit pants and take longer than riding it. Depends where it's actually sited, but both the BBC and ITV are in the area, so I dare say there are a fair few commuters who might use it.

CRAIGO5000

Problem is with MCUK is that they simply ill-thought out the whole development. They built that site and thought that sticking in a few hundred outdoor posts was a sufficient providing for cyclists.

The second ITV and the BBC came to site, they leased a large indoor storage site within The Green House building and "gave" all their employees a swipe card who wished to cycle.

The whole thing stinks imo. I enquired with The Green House staff and was told if I'm not BBC/ITV then I wouldn't be allowed access to park my bike securely in that indoor storage.

Now they are building this site on a large plot of the MCUK grounds and charging to use it. Luckily, I moved jobs recently, still within MCUK. My new employer allows me to bring my bike indoors and they are soon having a shower fitted.

I just found the whole attitude a little off.

msmancunia

Would agree with this - hasn't been thought out at all. The locks on the Greenhouse kept getting broken, and people had their bike nicked out of their hands a couple of times late in the evening when they were leaving.

It wasn't much better inside the BBC buildings - there was one male and female shower inside the loos on each floor, it was tiny, and the lock was on the door of the changing room, so if one girl was in the shower, and locked the door, then nobody else could get changed (not everyone showered) until she'd finished. On our floor we had five or six girls riding in regularly, who had to queue up in the bathroom until this one girl decided she was done. If I was still there I'd pay for it, because the alternative was such a faff.

Agent57

Yeah msmanc, that changing room thing was annoying. I used to change in the cubicles if that happened, but it wasn't the best. Getting a locker was something of a mission too, particularly one on the same floor.

I didn't actually have problems with bike parking though, since I was on a Brompton that lived beside my desk. \o/

msmancunia

Karma kind of kicked in with the culprit though - she got sacked for coming in on a Saturday and STEALING a dress from the Strictly... meeting room!

Best changing rooms I have ever used were the ones at Bush House when I was at the World Service. Big changing rooms in the basement of each block, hair driers, big mirrors etc. I know I am a bit spoilt where I am now but even there they aren't great - nowhere near the lockers or bike room, showers on those stupid timers that you get in your local pool, and two tiny mirrors that are nowhere near the one plug socket in the room so that you have to climb over someone's hairdryer flex to come from the showers.

asprilla

msmancunia wrote:

Karma kind of kicked in with the culprit though - she got sacked for coming in on a Saturday and STEALING a dress from the Strictly... meeting room!

Best changing rooms I have ever used were the ones at Bush House when I was at the World Service. Big changing rooms in the basement of each block, hair driers, big mirrors etc. I know I am a bit spoilt where I am now but even there they aren't great - nowhere near the lockers or bike room, showers on those stupid timers that you get in your local pool, and two tiny mirrors that are nowhere near the one plug socket in the room so that you have to climb over someone's hairdryer flex to come from the showers.

You never been to the Broadcast Centre or Media Centre?

Excellent bike parking, although you still needed a lock, and a total of 10 showers across each floor. You'd see other cyclists across the atriums traipsing up and down the stairs or gambling on whether to start a queue. Generally ok if you got in before 8.30 and then started at the top and worked your way down.

cornerblock

msmancunia wrote:

It wasn't much better inside the BBC buildings - there was one male and female shower inside the loos on each floor, it was tiny, and the lock was on the door of the changing room, so if one girl was in the shower, and locked the door, then nobody else could get changed (not everyone showered) until she'd finished.

Probably like that in case Stuart Hall was ever prowling the corridors. It's a lockout.