I am slowly arriving at the conclusion that in a lot of cases when cycle campaigners around Tyneside are offered more cycle parking they should say "no thanks, please spend the money on something more useful".  This sounds ungrateful, counter intuitive, perhaps downright silly?  My thinking is as follows:

1/ In all my many years riding a bike I have never failed to find somewhere to park, there is always a lamppost railing or convenient bit of street furniture.  If numbers of bicycle users go up dramatically this will change, but for now its kind of OK.
2/ The fact that there is a purpose built steel pole in the ground does not make your bike more secure.  With the right locks you can secure a bike to anything, without the right locks you can't secure a bike to a Sheffield Stand or any other type of purpose built bike parking.
3/ Cycle parking does not encourage people to cycle to a destination, fear of having a bike stolen does discourage them, but the two are not one and the same.

Yes cycle parking is necessary, in some places where lots of people cycle its a big issue.  When I lived in Cambridge the station bike car park held thousands of bikes and always needed more racks.  Cycle parking at dutch stations is legendary.  Nexus' plans to only put in two Sheffield Stands at their rebuild of North Shields Metro Station are scandalous given the public money they are spending supposedly to deliver integrated transport.  But lets face it the average Tyne & Wear Metro station is not going to need more than 4 or 5 racks any time soon given current cycling levels.


I've been in two meetings with public sector people discussing cycling when the same story has been rolled out.  I used to cycle until <insert date> when I had my bike stolen.  Cue discussion on the importance of bike parking.  I am very sceptical of these stories, most people who have a car stolen do not stop driving, most bikes that are stolen are not secured with a lock that is fit for purpose.  What's really being said is "have some cycle parking, because its cheapish to put in, and asking for anything else is unrealistic".

Newcastle City Council have just installed hundreds of new Sheffield Stands often in completely random locations.  There is a very odd looking row of them on the Bigg Market which I have not seen used yet, where are all the dozens of people that they expect to be locking their bikes up on the Bigg Market?  The reason that they've done this is that they have had money left over at the end of the financial year, and no clear plan of how to use it, the default option being random bike parking installations.  The reason it is where it is on the big market is to stop vans parking on the pavement, not one person is going to take a decision to cycle into Newcastle because of this installation.



I spent a few hours recently sat outside a friends cafe in Honor Oak, South London, near where I grew up.  Lewisham Council had installed quite sensible cycle parking down the road, about every 20 yards there were a couple of stands.  Quite useful, you could go into a shop and still see your bike.  But the road was full of heavy 30 mph traffic with no bike lanes of any kind, the cycle parking was all empty.

Putting in good quality on or off road bike infrastructure is complicated.  It requires planning, it requires changes to motor vehicle flow, moving parking bays etc etc.  But we need complicated, and until we get it I'm afraid I'm campaigning against bike parking.