Here’s a great idea for a city like Bath that wants to encourage cycling but – with its Georgian architectural heritage – doesn’t make it easy to store these two-wheelers safely.
Anne Love writes:
‘I am a fan of your Bath Newseum site and I understand from your various comments, that you are a keen cyclist.
While the hills can be overcome by an electric bike (they are wonderful) the lack of safe, secure, dry storage in the city centre is a real block to bike ownership and use.
Georgian town houses almost never have rear access, where a bike could be safely stored, many are flats, where keeping a bike in the hall is often physically impossible and or, not permitted.
Locking your bike to the railings outside is terrible for a bike and risky, as they are frequently stolen apart from looking terrible.
What Bath needs is Cyclehoops Bike Hangars https://www.cyclehoop.com/product/shelters-canopies/bikehangar/
I am campaigning for these to be installed in Bath as part of traffic reduction. They cost £5000 installed, can hold 6 bikes in half a parking space. Users rent the space, so the capital investment can be recovered.
Initially people are resistant to the idea of the bike hangar pods, but they are much smaller than a van or 4X4 car and no one objects to these blotting out the view. In fact the pods are smaller than a small hatch back, so easy to see over.
Currently there is one in Bath off Court Yard Mews, which is the passage way next to Dorothy House on London Road, it was installed by Anthem Publishing with half paid for by the council.
There are many city centre places where a bike hangar could be installed and would upset no one, ends of streets where a blank wall faces the street, or spare patches of land, like the corner of Cavendish Road and Julian Road, opposite the Marlborough Tavern and many other places.’
Anne enclosed a document she wrote for the Circus Area Residents Association who have adopted the use of bike hangars as part of their Low Traffic Neighbourhood proposal – showing sites where such bike hangars could be positioned.
She concludes: ‘I would like inform a wider audience to the possibilities of on street bike storage and wonder if you would consider sharing this idea in one of your posts?’
Happy to do so and interested to see what response we get.
Morning Richard,
Great proposal. The pods could be decorated to match the surrounding environment.
Best wishes,
Charles
Sent from my iPhone
Agreed – a great idea. As the proposer quite rightly points out, there is no argument against these bike parks on visual grounds – they are far less intrusive than large vans, 4×4’s, and large people carriers. If you want to encourage cycling beyond the really committed, then it must be made more attractive to ‘ordinary people’ – after all, who wants to mount a soaking wet or frost covered machine ?
Electric bikes are really expensive at least £1,800 to £4,000 you can’t expect people to leave them on the street in the rain and vulnerable to theft. My friends electric bike was £3,300 stolen, when the thieves could not break his lock, they sawed through the the railings!
It would be great to be able to store my bike securely outside the house in a weatherproof unit. There should be at least one on every street in Bath, whether requested or not, to enable cycle ownership.
I would like to see some of the empty retail premises turned into secure bike garages. More secure.
What a good idea. Even if the bike storage site had to move it wouldn’t be a problem. Anne Love
Great idea for Bath and very much part of our Liveable Neighbourhood ideas in Camden. Many houses on our street have long steep front gardens down to the pavement which are themselves close to a busy dangerous road. Safe, secure parking at the roadside would make the use of a bike so much more convenient and therefore a ‘first choice every time’ rather than ‘I can’t be bothered’. Relatively few households, I would suggest, have single bike users in them, so those that opt to use a bike hangar for all their bikes do need the charge per bike to be less pro rata – particularly as they are ‘doing the right thing’.