Thursday 30 April 2009

Bike parking for St Michael's Hill Somerfield

Somerfield supermarket, at the top of St Michael's Hill, is the primary place to buy food to take home. They have a good discount beer collection, and reasonable petit-pain-au-chocolat. No bike parking though. There is car parking, but as we have seen before, it overflows.

Two racks are planned for Somerfield, which, if placed on this build out would be ideal for bike parking that does not get in the way of pedestrians. There is one bike locked to a lamp-post here already
Only, are two racks enough?

If a cycle city is to succeed, more people will come home from work or college by bike, hence more bike parking. A supermarket with no bike parking is an ideal place to add some. How many is appropriate?

These photos were taken on April 29, 18:20. This is the peak way-home-from-work-or-school shopping rush, when many city supermarkets run out of hand baskets, and you have to carry your 6 bottles of UK-manufactured-Kronenbourg-1664 to the checkout in one hand, the box of coco pops in the other.
There is one bike locked to a sign, three bikes to the fire exit from the flats -the final one will block the exit, so hopefully there won't be a fire in the next fifteen minutes.
Across the road, two more chained to a roadsign

And two more on another road sign. Ten bikes! A success for cycling city.

These figures imply you need five racks, even for today's workload. For a doubling in cycling: ten racks. Where to put them? How about they go where cars, like the ones above X81FBN and R738ZNA, park on double yellow lines?

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