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