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Winchester has a Park & Ride scheme with a Park & Cycle option (£130 vs £644 to park and get the bus). The car park is next to a National Cycle Route so it's a nice ride in to the city centre.

https://www.winchester.gov.uk/parking/parkandride/season-tickets-park-an...

I used to use to Nottingham tram park and ride car parks for exactly that. Free to use car park at Toton and then a nice 25 minute cycle into the city centre along the canal path.

Which major UK cities are these?  London's major Stadiums are all 5 miles + inside the M25 and very few have that level of parking.

Maybe reduce train fairs to less than the incremental cost of driving may help.  Colleague at work dives into NW2 from Luton as the daily train fair is £20 than the incremental cost of using his car.

Cardiff, Bristol, Manchester, Sheffield.

I'm sure there are plenty more but you get the picture.

Given that the cost is essentially zero you don't need to have tons of parking at each site, any reduction in car journeys is useful and welcome.

Rich_cb wrote:

Cardiff, Bristol, Manchester, Sheffield. I'm sure there are plenty more but you get the picture. Given that the cost is essentially zero you don't need to have tons of parking at each site, any reduction in car journeys is useful and welcome.

Maybe if they designed these shopping centres and stadia with good traffic free cycling/walking routes into the city centres this would be a good deal.

As it stands most places with free parking have restricted times, 2 hrs max or similar, so they'd need to change something but it wouldn't take much to do a quick traffic survey to determine their spare capacity and implement some sort of long term permit system.

Cardiff are doing just that.

Fully segregated cycle path from the CCFC stadium to the city centre and beyond (*Buzz light-year voice*).

I've been genuinely impressed with Cardiff council's approach to cycling infrastructure recently, it's not all perfect but some of it is incredibly good.

Don't that team play in the Cardiff arms stadium? If so I always classed that as being in the city centre. It if definitely closer then the main train station is to it. 

That's the Cardiff Blues/ Cardiff RFC (Rugby), they are right in the city centre.

Cardiff City (Football) are on the outskirts, a few hundred yards from the (not quite complete) ring road.

Ahh, good to know. I knew they had moved grounds to a short distance away and had also seen the smaller ground next to the Millenium (or whatever it is titled now) when visiting the office we had there at the time, just put 2+2 together and ......

The new football ground is literally next door to where the old one was, as shown in this picture (the old ground has been demolished now).

rct wrote:

Which major UK cities are these?  London's major Stadiums are all 5 miles + inside the M25 and very few have that level of parking.

Maybe reduce train fairs to less than the incremental cost of driving may help.  Colleague at work dives into NW2 from Luton as the daily train fair is £20 than the incremental cost of using his car.

London is probably an exception, because the stadia are not on the periphery of the city, and are generally well served by public transport, so no need for parking or space for parking

West Ham  - Stratford on multiple lines

Chelsea - Fulham broadway or Earls court

Arsenal - Finsbury Park, Caledonian Road, Highbury and Islington, Arsenal

Tottenham - a few rail stations

Wembley - wembley stadium, wembley north, wembley park

There was someone who used to park on a car park next to us and get his bike out to cycle the mile or so more he had to travel into the city centre. He only used to do it because the building was empty so didn't have to pay for parking. The Morrisons across the way does all day parking permits as they have more spaces then needed. Those people are told to park on the top level as most shoppers use the lower two. I count 6 cars up their on a good day whilst watching all the cars jam up the road into the city centre. So good idea but most people won't take it up as they prefer door to door (or at least less then a 15 min walk) if they have to pay for parking. 

I think more people would do it if they were aware quite how much time it could save, stuff like the traffic announcement in the blog would certainly help with that.

My street is regularly bumper to bumper with cars in the morning yet there's free non resident parking and town is 5 mins away by bike. I find it crazy that people would rather sit in their car for half an hour!

Rich_cb wrote:

I think more people would do it if they were aware quite how much time it could save, stuff like the traffic announcement in the blog would certainly help with that.

I suspect that traffic announcement will merely wind some motorists up even more, rubbing salt into their psychic wounds by reminding them that they didn't actually have to be sitting in stationery traffic.

My boss, when time is available, takes his bike in his car, drives to somewhere he can park for free, gets his bike out and rides the rest of the way in.  Joins my morning commute ride a bit in, which is wonderful and mostly off road. He even did it with the mud too...

Admittedly I don't know how much further the person in question travelled, however as mentioned, our office to the the city centre is 1 mile max. He probably spent as much time getting the bike in and out that walking it might have been almost quicker and definitely would have been more useful for fitness. 

An interesting and constructive idea.  No fundamental reason why this shouldn't work but I suspect that this may founder more on the "bike" part.  There's "convenience" and "resistance to change". There's no reason why people can't already do this with park and ride - albeit ideally you'd have good secure storage at the "park" so you can keep your short distance transport there (e.g. bike - or increasingly scooter).  Indeed I see from the comments that park and bike is official in a couple of places.  But I'm not aware that this is a major growth area. We've got a long way to go before the relative convenience of car over bike is low enough to make this mainstream.

Wonder if there's also a psychological barrier in that for many people their car is an extension of home - indeed sometimes "better" as it gives your own "space" away from those you live with.  It's difficult to persuade people out when they haven't finished the journey. If it was e.g. train and cycle or tram and cycle then you've already "left home" at the door.  Obviously the same applies to park and ride although there you're still mostly "sitting inside your transport" for more of the journey.

A lot of cities already have "park and rides" - it would just be changing the "ride" part from a bus to a bike. And I do in fact already know some commuters who use the park and ride exactly like that. I do recognise that a lot of park-and-rides are currently located in pretty awful locations for cycling (i.e. along trunk roads with no proper cycling infrastructure) so there's definitely still work to be done. I also wonder if there are financial issues (i.e. parking is currently free but covered by the bus fare) - although I daresay those shouldn't be insurmountable. 

Edit: just saw that DoomeFrog had the same idea a minute before me!

York has P&Rs where you're already allowed to park and cycle.

wycombewheeler wrote:

If anyone has a journey which averages less than 10 miles per hour, it would likely be quicker and cheaper by bike, or e bike, I guess the problem is when people have driven 20 miles in half an hour to the edge of the city, then join the traffic, and I'm not sure the solution is building huge car parks around the edge of the city where people can park and then cycle the rest.

But most commuting car journeys are less than five miles, which could easily be ridden, and they are the ones causing most of the congestion, pollution and danger.

The distance should be easily rideable for most,once you get over the psychological feel it's a long way for newbie cyclists, but is the route easy to ride ?

5miles of near death experience every day is going to have you rushing back into your metal box safety cell quicker than you can say it.

eburtthebike wrote:

wycombewheeler wrote:

If anyone has a journey which averages less than 10 miles per hour, it would likely be quicker and cheaper by bike, or e bike, I guess the problem is when people have driven 20 miles in half an hour to the edge of the city, then join the traffic, and I'm not sure the solution is building huge car parks around the edge of the city where people can park and then cycle the rest.

But most commuting car journeys are less than five miles, which could easily be ridden, and they are the ones causing most of the congestion, pollution and danger.

this is true, so anyone in congestion on their long commute should be looking first at any colleagues that live locally and still drive and not the one cyclists they were stuck behind for 30 seconds.

I tend to agree.  Ideally bicycles and mobility vehicles etc. would be a "no brainer" solution to extend the "catchment area" of public transport such as trains, trams and buses.  So you have several networks - long (train), medium (bus) and short (walk / cycle).  Currently for many areas (even within cities) there's either a lack of public transport or it has insufficient capacity / frequency or reliability. Most stops / stations lack the ability to securely store your bicycle and / or rent one as needed.

Obviously people's working locations and patterns change though.  Indeed in the Netherlands the average commute - already long - is going up (as of 2019).  (The car is also still overwhelmingly the major commuting mode there too). But multi-modal transport is much better understood and integrated.  They have a national network of rental bikes based at most stations.

Bicycle Dutch has good posts on this including his commute.

The bottom line is private car ownership is too cheap, it is subsidised by us all and the planet to a huge extent. Until the real cost is passed on to the owner, nothing will change.  Obviously a very bitter political pill to swallow.  Otherwise the best amelioration is to take out as much of the upfront motoring costs as possible and pass them down to fuel, taxes etc. easily said than done, I'm no economist