Sadly you have a very small
and highly persecuted group (individual!) making the case to have the
option of choice,
So sad also to hear about SA - how on earth do they expect to enforce
CHW when the bike provides such important transport in remote and rural
areas.
2 further big boosts to cycle use in London were when major rail
disruption took place ofve 6 month periods at St Pancras and Waterloo.
For the former the number of bikes parked overnight shot up by 1000%
with a further increase in the number of bikes travelling in with the
trains. For the latter a boost in numbers was perhaps greater than the
St Pancras surge but went on to an already large number of bikes parked
overnight the residual effect of the later is that 15% of the bikes
heading North across Blackfriars Bridge have come from Waterloo
Station.
At many SW London rail stations the high cost of car parking, along
with the shortage of spaces, and congestion on local roads has
relentlessly driven up demand for cycle parking. The rail operator
also sees a gain as the local commuters move to cycling and rlease car
park capacity - avoiding the costly exercise of shoe-horning in more
car parking spaces.
Combining the cost of home station parking and the £600+ per year cost
of a London Zones card and you will pay for a basic Brompton folding
bike in 4 -6 months. 40% of bikes passing through the main cycle acces
to Waterloo at peak times are Bromptons 20% are other folding bikes and
40% are conventional machines - during the morning peak there are
roughly 250 bikes per hour leaving through this route. A similar count
at Cambridge revealed that 30% of the bikes were folding bikes (did not
sub group the Bromptons). At Paddington I've observed a typical
loading of 1-2 folding bikes in each coach on the fast Reading-London
trains during the morning peak. No counts yet (anyone fancy a short
sampling session (Bristol, Manchester Piccadilly and other locations
seem to have strong cycle traffic at peak times, and substantial
increases in parked bikes over the past decade).
Green and folding paper - finest incentive available to encourage
cycling* - and up to 60 minutes each way that you can potentially cut
from the 90-120 minute typical door-to desk commute for London *
Cutting out the car parking and London Zones costs saves
£1500-£2000/year to which you can further add cutting gym costs, and
the cost of running a car that sits parked at the station all day -
potentially £8000 per year for some commuters. Buys a lot of extra
mortgage capacity.
Dave Holladay