Parkinson's Law of Cycle Storage

Estate agent Ludlow Thompson have started putting prominent 'how to cycle here' links on properties advertised on their website. They seem quite keen generally on the bike thing, with positive bike features on their website. They're the first estate agent we've noticed that treats cycling as a significant factor for the buyer, and obviously we're all for it.

On similar lines, a recent article in the Independent reckoned that cycling convenience - mainly parking possibilities but also route access - is becoming more of a factor for buyers.


It points out that cycling levels in London have risen dramatically since 2000 "partly thanks to Government efforts", which is an interesting use of the word 'partly', and of the word 'efforts'. Now, it's the sort of article that comes round every few months and should be taken with a pinch of salt - which is about all our local council have left for the next cold snap - but it's something, I suppose.

Bike storage in London is a problem, especially in flats. We're all familiar with the hallway assault course, where you have to vault a Brompton, snake past a Dawes Galaxy, and limbo under the handlebars of a Dutch bike just to get to the bog.

In new buildings it's particularly bad: Southwark Cyclists' experience is that developers get away with providing as little bike storage as they can, with councils are reluctant to pressurise them. No doubt market forces would work better, so let's hope that house descriptions begin to make more of cycle storage possibilities where they exist, and make it a routine part of house details.

Was bike storage information provided on our house details, even though we are lucky enough to have a small outhouse perfect for the purpose? I don't know, and to get to the box in the cupboard under the stairs they're stored in, I'd have to shift cratefuls of old mudguards, spent inner tubes, worn saddles, disused handlebars, and tangles of oxidised ironmongery of no clear purpose. There must be a Parkinson's Law of domestic cycle storage: however much room you have, cycle stuff expands to fill the space available.

Behind the facade in Leinster Gardens

Most cycle facilities are just a facade, but there's a quirky couple of posh terrace houses just north of Hyde Park that are a facade too.

As you ride up Leinster Gardens, off Bayswater Road, there seems nothing untoward about the line of splendid terrace houses on the left.

But Nos 23 and 24 don't exist, despite being decorated with proper window and door frames and balconies. The windows are only painted on (right), because there's nothing behind.


The 'houses' sit over an Underground railway. If you nip round the back, via the bike cut-through to Porchester Gardens, you can see the back of the facade, the supporting metal joists, and the rail line (right).



They are next door to the Henry VIII hotel (which claims on one of its doors to be No 23, and which gets some entertainingly mixed reviews on TripAdvisor).

This is all pleasant territory to nose around by bike. Hyde Park is just over Bayswater Road to the south, and there are lots of little mews and well-to-do streets to explore. Leinster Gardens also has a few shops.

Vertical bike parking?

There's a shortage of cycle parking, as we know. Developers never put enough in flats and councils never put enough in city centres.

The two middle photos on the right demonstrate that. The Damoclean balcony parking for small city flats is somewhere in Southwark. At least it presents something of a challenge to the thief with vertigo. The Evel Knievel solution for pubgoers in a hurry was spotted in Dublin.

But comes another day, comes another award-winning (for which read 'entertainingly impractical') bike-parking solution. (Top right, from last Friday's Evening Standard, via Freewheeler's busy Waltham Forest blog.)


"The device can be fitted to any wall and uses a simple hoist, powered by an electric motor, to raise and lower the bicycle. It could be operated by a remote control, or by the owner swiping their Oyster card on a reader", says the Standard.

Perpendicular storage may be fine in a guard's van, but turning your home's front elevation into a cycling assault course doesn't appeal to me.

For one thing, it looks awfully exposed to the elements. For another, it seems just too damn cumbersome. An essential pleasure of cycling is door-to-door convenience - people will always prefer the simple, straightforward lock-up directly outside an entrance to a 'proper' cycle park even 50m away.

See, for example, Tate Modern or Kings Place. Both organisations thoughtfully provide cycle parking just round the corner. At Tate it's a nice covered bike shed, of the sort the big kids at your school were smoking behind during dinner break. At Kings Place it's a set of 'CaMden' stands.

But at both places, you'll find most bikes are instead chained to the railings directly outside their entrance. (Whether the railings proved safer we don't know, but we do know that the Camden stands proved a magnet for thieves.)


And the faff of getting a bike down from the side of a house would be a major disincentive to use your bike for a short trip. The bike would end up just being left up there, unused.

Clearly the idea's been tried before, in this Oxfordshire village (right): imagine how long that bike must have been stuck there.