Become a supporter
Small businesses, charities and other Swindon organisations can get free bike parking for their premises – courtesy of the local council.
Swindon Borough Council, working with charity Life Cycle, is offering up to four free stands for qualifying groups. So far 70 local organisations have taken up the offer.
With the stands paid for and delivered free of charge, the organisation simply has to pay for them to be installed. According to Claire Fleming from Swindon Borough Council:
“We know that many small organisations don’t have the funds to pay for items, such as cycle parking, which aren’t core to their activity. That’s why we feel it’s important to help them provide stands and increase levels of cycling in the borough.”
One of the organisations to take up the offer is Wiltshire Wildlife Trust. Neil Pullen explained:
“Wiltshire Wildlife Trust gratefully received two stands from Life Cycle Uk for the nature reserve at Kings Farm Wood, Wroughton. These are in place near the gate at Badgers Brook and provide cyclists with an opportunity to safely secure their bikes whilst walking through the nature reserve, which is the gateway to the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.”
You can apply on line at www.lifecycleuk.org.uk/free-cycle-parking.
Birmingham might not have a city bike-hire scheme yet, but you can now hire a Brompton from Moor Street railway station.
The foldable bikes will be rentable from each of the three city centre mainline stations: Moor Street at first, then New Street and Snow Hill. The automated ‘Brompton Docks’ have already been installed at other city stations across the country.
The docks each house 20 of the miniature folding bikes. The £140,000 scheme has been funded by £90,000 secured by London Midland through the Department for Transport’s Cycle-Rail Fund with Birmingham City Council contributing the rest of the money.
Roger Horton of local transport authority Centro said:
“Cycling can play an important role in clearing the congestion on our roads and it is important that we keep looking for ways to make sure that it best connects with rail travel.”
Would be Bromptonauts need to register online first at bromptondock.co.uk. After selecting the date, location and time they wish to hire a bike, they’re sent a PIN code direct to their mobile phone which allows them to access one of the British-built cycles. Rentals cost £2.50 per day for people registered as frequent users and £5.00 for those signing up as occasional users. Bikes can be kept for as long as needed, with a daily charge applied to the account holder’s credit or debit card, and can even be returned to Brompton Docks at other railway stations.
Fittingly, the docks are manufactured locally in Dudley and have their electronics and power systems fitted at a Birmingham based plant.
Other cycling improvements at local stations include ‘Cycle Hubs’, which feature swipe-card parking for members and internal and external CCTV. These have already been opened at Selly Oak and Stourbridge Junction stations and are planned for locations including Rowley Regis and Longbridge.
The New Forest National Park has attracted the condemnation of cyclists after scrapping a proposed cycle hire scheme – amid accusations of “NIMBYism”.
The scheme, announced earlier this year, would have seen 20 docking stations and up to 300 bikes available across the picturesque South Coast area. The docks would have been located near bus stations, railway stations, in towns and at tourist attractions.
But an extraordinary meeting of the New Forest National Park Authority today saw the scheme thrown out, after an officers’ report recommended that the project be abandoned. The report by John Lynn, Cycling Projects Manager for the National Park, argued:
“The likelihood of any significant sponsorship being available to the New Forest system has markedly reduced. In the New Forest a major anti-cycling sentiment has come to the fore in the wake of large-scale cycle sportive events which have impacted on local people. A fresh wave of concern exists about the safety of on-road cycling.
“Concerns about safety featured prominently in the responses to the recent questionnaire about the proposed scheme, especially amongst those who live and work in the Forest. Members therefore questioned whether the time was right to introduce more cyclists onto New Forest roads.”
Councillors speaking at the meeting were reported on Twitter as saying “I don’t cycle and I don’t want to cycle”, and “I don't like cycle sportives, I got caught up in the one weekend just gone!”.
With such attitudes, it was no surprise that 12 councillors voted for the scheme to be scrapped and only two for it to go ahead, with three abstentions.
The campaign to save the scheme had attracted high-profile support from the former Olympic cyclist and bike advocate, Chris Boardman; long-serving pro rider Jens Voigt; and cycling campaigners from across Britain.
Nor was opposition to the scheme universal in the New Forest – with the Parish Council for Brockenhurst, the major village in the centre of the Forest, offering general support to a hire scheme, but only after an “expansion of the [local cycling] network to enable and ensure safe, family friendly, recreational cycling”.
But although an online petition garnered over 2,000 signatures in support of the scheme, councillors said that they considered the views of locals more important.
The scheme would have largely been funded by central Government, which awarded cycle funding to four National Parks. Dartmoor, the South Downs and the Peak District are still expecting to go ahead with their plans.
Update: In a statement, the National Park Authority has restated its doubts about obtaining sponsorship, and cited “a lack of strong support for the scheme among local residents”. However, the survey results published by the authority draw no such conclusion, and merely state that there was “a wide range of views amongst the respondents”.
According to Chairman Oliver Crosthwaite-Eyre:
“As members we have scrutinised it very carefully, and concluded that the risks of setting up the scheme now outweigh the benefits. We felt we simply could not justify spending a considerable amount of government money on a system that might not be able to survive at this time, and which seems to have insufficient support in the key locations of the Forest where it needs to operate from.”
The NPA says it will now “support alternative cycling projects with the funding previously allocated for the public bike system”. Given that one of the reasons for cancelling the bike hire project was that a “challenging delivery timetable for the project, by March 2015”, it is unclear what projects the Authority believes it will be able to start, and complete, within the same time.
If you don’t have a kickstand on your bike, check out the new ‘Bicyclick’ – an intriguing solution to standing your bike up. As long as you have a cycling friend, that is. The invention replaces your handlebar end plugs, and allows two bikes to click together, such that they stand up when placed next to each other. The inventors are seeking to raise $25,000 on Kickstarter in the next 30 days: at present they’re at $6,600.
The City of London is consulting on proposals to make two significant streets, Chancery Lane and Little Britain, two-way for cyclists. The plans aim to create “alternative routes to some of the busiest City streets” and have been welcomed by cycling campaigners, who say this would achieve “a great cycle route during rush hour when both the parallel routes can become snarled up with buses and taxis”. Comments are requested by Friday.
Made in the Cotswolds. Published by Éditions Système D Ltd.
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