Cycle hub planned for Manchester office block with parking spaces for 200 bikes

A smaller version has just opened up by Victoria station. http://www.popupbikes.co.uk/

To the poster above. Apart from University corridor to the south of the city, Manchester is light years behind London in uptake.

I would hardly call this ambitious. I expect it is a different cycling environment from central London, but the City of London (which is hardly a beacon of light in this respect, albeit better than many) has a strategy which recognises that it needs to find TWENTY SEVEN THOUSAND new cycle parking spaces to cater for 10% of the daytime population of commuters who arrive by bike.

Most of that, realistically, has to be provided by private landlords, and once all planning applications approved up to 2009 have been built, there will be 10,000 private secure spaces in office buildings. From this year under the new planning framework, new developments will require one space for every 125 sqm of office space - quite close to a space for every ten personnel inside, and twice as many as the previous requirements (since 2002).

The City estimated that to provide enough spaces publicly would require a four-storey bike park which would cover an area the size of the Guildhall complex, so clearly passing the obligation manly to landlords is vital. There have been relatively few new public spaces on the street, but a few of the City car parks have had a few car spaces converted to accommodate double-decker bike racks which can typically hold about 20 bikes in the space of one car.

They also encourage landlords of existing buildings to introduce more bike racks, but they don't have the specific power to force them to do this unless a planning consent is involved. All the same, some landlords and some employers exceed the minima - the landlords normally only when a prospective tenant demands it - and my employer for example is opening a new facility (with lockers, showers, and an on-site maintenance facility) to increase our capacity by about 200, taking it to about 525, or about 8% of total staff.

Getting to work on the boss therefore strikes me as a more promising way of increasing the number of spaces.

Great stuff. This is across the road from my office and those of us who use the current facilities from the landlord were asked to do a questionnaire on this last year, thought it was a great idea but had died a death.

Bruntwood do things to a pretty good spec so of anyone can get this off the ground they can, although it'll have been appraised as being a cash generator before investing and if the council are chipping in all the better.

Glad they are doing this, but I bet you won't be able to ride your bike into the cycle park. Bound to be a steep ramp or lifts involved, along with "no cycling" and "cyclists dismount" signs. Hope I'm wrong!

I really wanted to set something like this up in Bath for all the Bristol > Bath commuters. Unfortunately I don't have the capital, maybe one day I will win the lottery and do it!