Secure bike storage is a growing obstacle to cycling as a popular mode of commuting, a new survey shows.
A poll of nearly 1,000 bike owners found that 72 percent of those surveyed found the problem of storing bikes out and about is deterring people from riding. Only 15 percent of participants had some degree of trust in bike storage at railway stations or similar transport hubs, with only three percent fully trusting the storage. In London, the figure was two percent.
The data is the latest evidence that train station bike theft is deterring people from cycling. Last autumn, thefts became commonplace enough for the British Transport Police to stop investigating thefts unless the bikes were locked up and left for less than two hours. Following a public backlash, the policy was scrapped earlier this year.
Sean Carney, Chief Underwriting Officer of Cycleplan which commissioned the survey, said the study showed that “bike parking at stations had become a reason to opt out of cycling.”
“It’s real failure of provision, and one that’s costing the city journeys every single day. If London is serious about getting more people on bikes, secure, trusted parking at transport hubs has to be a key part of that conversation.”
Data published in January showed that of the nearly 4,200 bike thefts reported to the British Transport Police in January, only 22 suspects had been charged, leading the Crush Crime campaign group to claim “theft is now legal in Britain”. In London, only two percent of stolen bikes are likely to be recovered according to a report by the London Cycling Campaign.
Asgard Access E Plus Bike Storage.jpg (Image Credit: Farrelly Atkinson)
The latest survey also shone a light on evolving attitudes towards bike storage in the home, with growing numbers of cyclists preferring to store the bike in their ‘main living space’ rather than a shed or outbuilding, with security outweighing convenience among the respondents. However, this is also driven by the rising popularity of e-bikes which require more space to store and is heavier, making storage more complicated. The e-bikes are also typically more valuable than a normal bicycle.
This likely factored in thieves choosing to target the “chunky” e-bike of former BBC journalist Rory Cellan-Jones, despite deliberately locking his bike among others directly under a CCTV camera. The Met Police’s investigation into his theft was closed after 20 minutes, with Cellan-Jones brandishing the theft “a bloody annoyance” that might have stood a better chance of protection had he “parked it in the open against a lamppost”.
2 thoughts on “Most commuters don’t trust bike storage at stations, putting them off cycling, new survey finds”
I’d rather park my bicycle a couple of hundred metres away in town than at reading train station.
I would never leave a cycle locked up, unattended in London. If I have to, I use three or four locks and put a motion alarm on the frame. Recently, I had to go to a meeting at Westminster and I asked the old bill if I could use the staff bike park to lock my bike – there was plenty of airport type security for them to check it and me, but they said no. He then went on to warn me not to lock it up anywhere in the vicinity. For security reasons? I asked. No, the copper replied, ‘because it will get nicked!’ Everyone knows that in London bike theft is endemic and unchallenged. And this does mean that less people cycle than could.