No easy place to store a bike? There are ways forward.. (balconeys in Hackney)

Residents of many dense urban areas may struggle to find space to store bikes or access them easily, particularly in flats or terraced houses. Lack of space to store a bike or the difficulty of moving it in and out may be enough to discourage their use. The solution is to offer on-street storage.

Residential cycle parking is now common in London with Boroughs like Hackney and Waltham Forest leading the way in introducing on-street “bike hangers” that residents can rent spaces in. Both authorities expect to have 1,000 hangers, each with space for six bikes, in place by the end of 2023. Councils outside London are now taking notice and this includes the West Yorkshire authorities.

Example cycle hanger

Consequently, the West Yorkshire Combined Authority commissioned Transport Initiatives to:

• Research available residential cycle parking products on the market
• Review operating residential cycle parking schemes in the UK and find out any lessons for West Yorkshire regarding charging, management options and locations.
• Develop a site selection methodology using weighted indicators of need to rank sites for their suitability to introduce residential parking and use this to select pilot sites within West Yorkshire

Another example cycle hanger

In our work we detailed 27 different products for storing cycles on street including those that would accommodate larger cargo bikes.

Our research also found 32 local authorities operating residential parking schemes, 26 of these in London. We contacted all of these and asked each to complete a questionnaire to inform us of their experience with operating their schemes.

Example cycle lockers

Hackney and Waltham Forest have brought management and operation of their schemes in-house. However, the predominant model for other authorities with smaller schemes is to have the hanger/parking suppliers manage their schemes.

Users pay on average an annual fee of around £60 per parking space. Despite this the waiting list for places is typically two to three times greater than the number of spaces available. Schemes are therefore very popular and need little publicity once established.

You can fit cargo bikes into this one

We used our site selection methodology to recommend 16 sites in the five West Yorkshire districts. The sites were mainly terraced housing and tower blocks. We anticipate that once pilot schemes are in place and running and given even limited publicity, our methodology will be redundant as demand will rapidly become the main factor in the selection of new sites.

In situ – but not in West Yorkshire

Careful siting of parking is essential. We recommended that:

• Sites should be well overlooked and well lit
• Max 70m away from homes
• At least 15m from a junction to reduce vehicle strikes
• Remember the 2m space needed to access the units.

We look forward to seeing pilot residential cycle parking schemes introduced not only in West Yorkshire but throughout the UK.

Another cycle parking project covered Watford town centre

Posted 16/11/2023