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Council "investigating" after driver outrage at cycle hangar "deliberately" blocking car parking spaces

Cries of council "incompetence" or even the "continuing war against motorists" have spread across local news reports and social media since the parking facility with space for six bikes was photographed taking up two car parking spaces...

Brighton & Hove City Council has responded to backlash from angered motorists and said it is "investigating" after a bike hangar was pictured installed in a car parking space.

The cycle hangar in Norfolk Square is one of 60 installed in the city since July, each offering secure storage for six bicycles in a space the size of which could otherwise house a single car.

However, the positioning of the hangar — taking up two resident permit car parking spaces — was met with outrage, one resident calling it "sheer incompetence or the continuing war by Brighton & Hove City Council against motorists" before later telling the local paper he "doesn't have a problem with the hangars", just the "madness" of one "that takes up two parking spaces".

> "It's absolute madness": Brighton motorists claim cycle hangar is "deliberately" taking up two car parking spaces

"It creates this hate between residents and car owners. I think it should be removed and put inside the square and that way there wouldn’t be a problem," Bill Young told the Argus.

In response to a question from road.cc, Brighton & Hove City Council confirmed it is "investigating" and is "aware of concerns" from residents.

The council was keen to add, however, that it has been "delighted" by the overall response to the new cycle hangars and "residents have wanted them for a long time", something apparent from the demand for available spaces.

"We began with the installation of 20 in July and saw a 100 per cent take-up rate in just a few weeks," Councillor Steve Davis, co-chair of the Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee explained.

"Since then we have installed 40 more, and all but one of the total of 360 spaces have now been snapped up. This means that 359 residents now have somewhere safe and secure to store their cycles. 

Brighton cycle hangar (credit - Brighton Active Travel)

"There are also around 300 people on waiting lists for spaces. We are currently looking at more hangar locations. We will have a total of 150 cycle hangars installed by spring of next year – that's 900 cycle spaces in total. 

"We know that if we're to get more people travelling actively and sustainably, we have to give them the right infrastructure. Cycle hangars provide people who live in homes with little or no storage space an opportunity to store their bikes safely and securely."

However, not everyone shared Cllr Davis' enthusiasm for the scheme, another resident telling the Argus — despite the roaring demand and growing waiting list — the hangars are "unnecessary" and "take up paid parking spaces on the streets".

"This hangar would only take up one space but the thing is they could have put it in a corner of the park. I think they are being used to take up car parking spaces. I think people will always take their bikes indoors, so who are these actually for?" they asked.

Another reply to the original Facebook post came from a motorist who says he pays "£235 a year, up from £195 last year" for a parking permit and "often spends ten to 20 minutes trying to park near my house. Please explain what I am paying for, and how these overpriced boxes are acceptable?"

Brighton is split into zones with car parking permits in 'high demand' areas such as Norfolk Square costing motorists between £110 and £385 a year depending on the emissions output of their vehicle.

The council states on its website that some car parking spaces "may be repurposed to accommodate cycle hangars" which are rented by residents for three, six or 12 months at a time at a cost of "around £1 a week per cycle space".

The hangars are accessed by a mobile app or lock and key and are, the council tells residents, "the size of approximately one parking space, and can store six standard sized bicycles".

It remains to be seen if the bike hangar at Norfolk Square will remain in place, but we will keep you updated when there is any more on this story...

Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.

Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.

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17 comments

Avatar
IanMSpencer | 1 year ago
3 likes

If you consider that you have to be able to put your bike in, I'm not clear how they do that safely in that location*. They have installed the entrance facing the road, so to put the bike away you have to faff around standing in the road. It can't be installed 90 degrees around as drivers are quite likely to attempt to block it, bumper up against the hanger, and 180 degrees there is a fence in the way. 

*Obvs. not that a driver would ever endanger anyone with a bike, would they?

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TheBillder | 1 year ago
3 likes

A) why should park users have to give up space?

B) if it takes 10-20 mins to find a space, why not take the first you find and walk (assuming no disability, for which there would presumably be a reserved space)?

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rico500 | 1 year ago
0 likes

im a cyclist and think its a great idea but taking up car parking spaces is the wrong thing to do, all's it does is create more bad feeling between car drivers and cyclists, if their is space else wear that should have been used wherever possible.

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Rendel Harris replied to rico500 | 1 year ago
12 likes

rico500 wrote:

im a cyclist and think its a great idea but taking up car parking spaces is the wrong thing to do, all's it does is create more bad feeling between car drivers and cyclists, if their is space else wear that should have been used wherever possible.

Thereby creating bad feeling between cyclists and park users who, quite rightly, wouldn't want to lose their green space. Additionally, siting hangars off the road has security implications both for giving thieves cover to break in and for people, especially women, putting their bikes away late at night. Cars have enjoyed hegemony in the streets for far too long, drivers are going to have to get used to the fact that they might have to give up maybe 1-2% of the space they currently have to non-polluting, non-lethal transport.

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Sriracha | 1 year ago
8 likes

The motorists are bitching because they've been cheated out of one space. The cyclists meanwhile have been cheated out of six. Who has the grievance here?

In any case, it looks like the original end bay impinges on the access to the park and probably should never have existed.

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Rendel Harris replied to Sriracha | 1 year ago
10 likes

Exactly; a glance at Norfolk Square on Google satellite view shows at least fifty parking spaces around the square. Leaving aside the heinous environmental vandalism of turning a beautiful Regency square into an ugly car park, drivers are being asked to give up less than 2% of available space.

I wonder if councils could run an incentive scheme whereby any resident willing to give up their parking permit would be guaranteed a bike hangar space?  Drivers could hardly whine that s'not fair that cyclists have a (tiny) bit of space if it can be shown that a car has been removed from the equation to make room for it.

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wtjs | 1 year ago
5 likes

Another reply to the original Facebook post(link is external) came from a motorist who says he pays "£235 a year, up from £195 last year" for a parking permit and "often spends ten to 20 minutes trying to park near my house. Please explain what I am paying for, and how these overpriced boxes are acceptable?"

The bleating of these people is the same as the atempts of other addicts to justify smoking or gambling- there's no point in arguing with them. The council is doing a good job, unless they give in to the hyper-junk press readers, who are generally all in favour of 'market forces', until they are affected themselves. The council just needs to repaint the parking spaces to accommodate reasonably sized city cars and there could be just as many car parking spaces- more 'market forces' and fewer Chelsea Tractors

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Kendalred | 1 year ago
17 likes

"This hangar would only take up one space but the thing is they could have put it in a corner of the park. I think they are being used to take up car parking spaces."

Or to paraphrase..."They should move their six vehicles off the road so I can store my one vehicle in the same space instead"

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Rich_cb replied to Kendalred | 1 year ago
13 likes

6 vehicles who, at £50/year each, are between them paying more for the space than you are.

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chrisonabike replied to Rich_cb | 1 year ago
5 likes

Good point, but they're not using those vehicles to contribute to the economy, to do the shopping and help local businesses (like the out-of-town supermarket), to commute and earn money, or go out selling things and make money, or drive to conferences and attract money to this country!  Think of all the Kwik-Fit Fitters who won't be employed, emergency towing services not needed or petrol station attendants out of work.  Much less business for the insurance markets.

No revenues from their use of petrol / electric fuel AND THEY DON'T EVEN PAY ROAD TAX!

I'll leave these longer reads here too.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136192092030571X

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800921003943

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Moist von Lipwig | 1 year ago
10 likes

"£235 a year, up from £195 last year" for a parking permit and "often spends ten to 20 minutes trying to park near my house. Please explain what I am paying for"

This is the sentence that stands out for me.  I'd expect you're paying for the right to park in any marked bay eligible as part of the scheme, irrespective of where it is.

What they expect is, I want to park outside my house. So how many cars are attached to the houses in that row that also want to park outside their houses, how many bays are potentially available in that area etc.  The two may not be compatible.   You don't own the space outside your house - tough.  I may spend 10-20 minutes looking for spaces in busy car parks,  just because I want to park there doesn't mean I've got the right to.

(If Brighton have sold 10,000 permits for 1,000 spaces, then I'm all for this scheme)

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Clem Fandango | 1 year ago
9 likes

It's a bit like like a proportion of Muricans and guns isn't it?

Suggest or try to introduce anything that might in some way ever so slightly inconvenience the gun/car owner (and even some things that probably won't) to make things better/safer/more pleasant for society as a whole, let alone enhance the experience of owners of a different thing (like bikes or school books) and the vocal minority have a melt down. 

"They're coming for our guns/cars!" 

The currently privileged always see progress elsewhere as somehow taking things away / discriminating against them, rather than seeing beyond the end of their own bonnet/barrel. 

PS I recognise that this may well have opened the door for Nige & his various personas (one of them must be a gun-toting hillbilly?) - my apologies.  I've tuned them out now, I just think of him as a less amusing Roger

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hawkinspeter replied to Clem Fandango | 1 year ago
4 likes

Clem Fandango wrote:

It's a bit like like a proportion of Muricans and guns isn't it?

Suggest or try to introduce anything that might in some way ever so slightly inconvenience the gun/car owner (and even some things that probably won't) to make things better/safer/more pleasant for society as a whole, let alone enhance the experience of owners of a different thing (like bikes or school books) and the vocal minority have a melt down. 

"They're coming for our guns/cars!" 

The currently privileged always see progress elsewhere as somehow taking things away / discriminating against them, rather than seing beyond the end of their own bonnet/barrel. 

PS I recognise that this may well have opened the door for Nige & his various personas (one of them must be a gun-toting hillbilly?) - my apologies.  I've tuned them out now, I just think of him as a less amusing Roger

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chrisonabike | 1 year ago
7 likes

Here's the core of our trouble with mass motoring with cars writ large.  The fact that we've quietly and gradually enacted the biggest privatisation of public "goods" since the enclosures.  It's the tragedy of people getting wildly aggrieved as the things they were encouraged, nay, almost strongarmed into having start losing their subsidies.  And they discover that their vehicles are not just far more expensive than they thought but they are (societally) unaffordable.

Probably belongs over on the "Drivers and their problems" thread but meantime this plays out as "but I've already paid good money for a permit..." and "I don't mind one less space (6 bikes...), but you want to take away two!" and "Where am I gonna park?  We could park right outside before - we've had to convert both garages, since the car we first bought was too big to fit in them anyway..." and "My mother moved in with us / our kids are growing up - where are we supposed to put their cars?"

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cyclefaster | 1 year ago
1 like

It probably just needs a bit of better communication from all involved. My understanding of these is that they are designed to fit within parking spaces, enabling bike parking in areas where people may not have storage facilities and not that they are just placed in a parking space with no thought. As with many parking facilities, the permit is providing permission to park, not a guaranteed space.

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eburtthebike | 1 year ago
7 likes

Every day we get more stories of climate change, obesity, health, congestion, pollution and road deaths and everyone tut-tuts and say something should be done.  But when someone does something that adresses all those problems at very little cost, they all say "I didn't mean something like that."

I'm beginning to despair of the human race, when so many people can be so blinkered, selfish and stupid to condemn their descendants to fire, floods, storms, starvation, death and destruction because they love their cars.

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ChrisB200SX replied to eburtthebike | 1 year ago
9 likes

eburtthebike wrote:

Every day we get more stories of climate change, obesity, health, congestion, pollution and road deaths and everyone tut-tuts and say something should be done.  But when someone does something that adresses all those problems at very little cost, they all say "I didn't mean something like that."

I'm beginning to despair of the human race

I wanted something to be done about it, but not something that would inconvenience me. It's all the other polluters that are the problem

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