Bread bin bike bunker blight

Why we hear less from those who would benefit from change on our streets. How we accelerated our cycle hangar program. And how to deal with the feelings that surround them.

Call it NIMBYism if you want, but governments can have bad ideas, and the people objecting to such proposals can be right. Two examples: residents opposing the construction of the disastrous and community-destroying A40 flyover (unsuccessfully) or John Betjeman opposing the destruction of St Pancras station (successfully). But whether it has merit or not, the Resident Objection looms large in the imagination of the British politician and government official.

Contained in it are all the basic elements of a good story which has the potential to travel. There is the protagonist (often residents very near the proposed scheme), an antagonist (often the local government) and tension or conflict (the proposed scheme where their interests don't align).

Much less is written about the angry emails about ‘no change’. The story is less clear. Sure there's a protagonist, but what about the antagonist? Is it local, regional, national governments job to fix their problem? Or is it the landlords?

But occasionally I will receive an email from a resident, frustrated about inaction (rather than proposed action), and they know with certainty where the buck stops. And in this case, it was the local authority to which I was elected. And of which my party (Labour) has just taken control for the first time: Westminster City Council, an inner London council. Which, at the time, provided 862 spaces in cycle hangars for a resident population of over 200,000 people.

“I've been a resident at [address withheld] since 2003. I work for the NHS. Last night, for perhaps the 5th time, my bicycle was stolen from outside my flat. I had secured it with the most expensive chain I could buy, and it's still gone. I have applied to the local council multiple times for access to a secure bicycle storage facility but there are very few of them in my area, and while I am on a waiting list, spots never seem to become available. I have been carrying my bicycle upstairs every day, but that just wasn't sustainable after a while, I live on the third floor of a Victorian conversion walk up and I don't have the physical strength, or the room in my tiny 400sq foot flat to continue to carry and store it inside my flat.

Is there anything that you can do please. Can you impress on the council that more secure bicycle storage is needed, and quickly, please? Can you suggest any alternative solutions for keeping bicycles safe? We're trying to do the right thing by relieving pressures on public transport, keeping ourselves fit, reducing greenhouse gases, reducing traffic on London's streets, and for our efforts we become victims of crime. I've owned this bicycle for all of 9 months. I bought it so I could commute to work and avoid getting covid again on crowded public transport. And for what.”

I can’t do a better job of spelling out the importance of safe cycle storage in an urban context. This resident nails it: public health, traffic congestion, and climate crisis. Others need a space for their adapted cycle or hand cycle which can be a lifeline for a person with a disability or mobility issue, or others want to be able to cycle with their kids to school. In cities, cycle hangers, those things shaped like bread bins on the street, are many people's only hope of secure overnight cycle storage. So, what next? Well, the council consults a small area around a proposed cycle hangar to help meet the needs of that resident. And this is fairly typical of the objections we receive when we try to do this:

"My objections to this proposal are:

[Area withheld] is a conservation area and [street withheld] is a particularly attractive and admired street so an ugly cycle hangar would certainly be a blot on the landscape.

[Street withheld] is very narrow so any spare parking and yellow line space are invaluable for drivers to pull into and allow an oncoming vehicle to pass. The cycle hangar would remove this opportunity.

The proposed site will eliminate most of, if not all, the resident parking space presently outside [house number withheld]. The pressure on resident parking in our area is huge and the loss of just one space will be serious.

I am also concerned about the noise from the opening and closing of the hangar and the parking and removal of cycles.

I realise that there is a need to provide secure cycle parking but strongly feel that [street withheld] is an inappropriate location.”

While these emails can often be coordinated and supported by multiple residents and the local residents association, the people who need a hangar are usually not talking to their neighbours. In a study by Ian Walker and Swansea University 65% of UK adults said they supported non-car travel more than others.

They see themselves as being in the minority even when they are in fact in the majority. On the other hand, most people in the UK thought their support for car travel was about the same as others - they think others think like them. Which might explain why people opposed to new cycle hangars seek eachother out, while those who support them, assume they are more alone than they really are, and don’t.

There’s an older theory: that we are more much more strongly motivated to avert a loss than make an equivalent gain, popularised by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. In this context, call it ‘car parking loss aversion’. It may help to explain why opposition to change sometimes seems so much more motivated than those hopeful for it.

But in spite of well written ripostes, Labour-run Westminster City Council has doubled the pace of delivery, and this month doubled the actual number of secure cycle parking spaces across the city. From 862 spaces in May 2022 to 1,816 spaces by the end of September 2025. Or, 862 spaces delivered in 7 years under the Conservatives — where an email of the second type would have almost certainly resulted in the immediate termination a new proposed hangar — to 954 spaces delivered in 3 years and 5 months under the new administration. I’m proud that this means we’re providing spaces for many more people, who are waiting for a cycle hangar, including that first resident.

But why do we need to consult at all? Couldn't we go faster if we didn't? Previous Conservative administrations put cycle hangars on the pavement, and this required no consultation. We raised the bar by preferring to replace car parking rather than take space from the pavement. I think that's the right decision, not to clutter our pavements further, but it does have a downside.

Because all of Westminster’s kerbside is already covered by Controlled Parking Zones (a good thing on the whole, you don’t want uncontrolled parking), all modifications require a new Traffic Management Order (TMO). This triggers a consultation in public with letters needing to be delivered to all properties within 25 metres of the site and notices erected on lampposts. At least in this country, thems the rules. [OK correction, it's more of a custom and practice than a rule. This means that we consult on almost Every. Single. Hangar.

And so, let’s deal with that objection email, given we need to consult and give consideration to what people say in consultation:

[Area withheld] is a conservation area and [street withheld] is a particularly attractive and admired street so an ugly cycle hangar would certainly be a blot on the landscape.

Reasonable people can disagree about the aesthetic merits of a Cyclehoop hangar. Personally I find them beautiful. But maybe I’m partial because I know how life changing it can be to rent a space in one. But I think it’s hard to argue with this: No one consulted you on their choice of car or van. Not all of them are beautiful. None of them are in keeping with a conservation area’s aesthetic. The Cyclehoop design we use in Westminster is, if you don’t like it, at least humbly painted the same colour as the other street furniture like bollards, bins and utility boxes - black - and is much smaller in profile than most cars.

Leo Murray has illustrated this perfectly (as part of campaigning in his local area for cycle hangars):

Credit: Leo Murray

[Street withheld] is very narrow so any spare parking and yellow line space are invaluable for drivers to pull into and allow an oncoming vehicle to pass. The cycle hangar would remove this opportunity.

Spare parking and yellow line space can’t be relied on, so streets need to be designed safely without relying on them to function. If passing places are needed, those should be protected with sterner kerbside controls like double yellow lines and double blips. Sometimes a resident will go further than this one did, and say that the cycle hangar will actually block larger vehicles from passing one another. Cyclehoop hangars come out 1.8m approx. from the kerb line, they are smaller than a car, so it obstructs no more than what it has replaced, as it generally replaces somewhere a car can park.

The proposed site will eliminate most of, if not all, the resident parking space presently outside [house number withheld]. The pressure on resident parking in our area is huge and the loss of just one space will be serious.

You could counter that the space lost is equivalent to less than one average sized car, or point to the occupancy surveys done that show spare capacity. But, on this point, it is going to be hard to get someone who feels they are losing something, to be convinced that it’s worth it for the gain that someone else will feel. So, instead I think it’s important for people to understand the unfairness of the situation we have on street currently. Even if people are not strongly intrinsically motivated by fairness and unfairness, most people can at least understand it. In Westminster, there are over 60,000 spaces for cars and vans to park or load and unload. The general rule of thumb in Westminster has been not to remove any of that space if the parking occupancy (or ‘stress’) is at 80% or higher. In other words, there must be at least 20% spare capacity for car parking before any other possible use (cycles, trees or other green space) gets a look-in. There are typically around 1,000 people who have registered and are on a waiting list for a cycle hangar - many of them will wait for months if not years to get a space. Meanwhile residential car parking permits are issued immediately - there is no waiting list. You don’t have to get into any debates about the benefits and negatives of different transport modes to note that this is one rule for residents with cars, and another for residents with bikes - and is patently unfair.

I am also concerned about the noise from the opening and closing of the hangar and the parking and removal of cycles.

Again, a comparison to cars is helpful here, given the hangars usually replace a car parking space. Hangar doors make a bit of noise when being opened or closed — but so do car doors. If they are excessively squeaky, we can deal with that through our maintenance contract. (Meanwhile, cycle hangars have no motor engines to idle through the night outside your child’s bedroom window.)

I realise that there is a need to provide secure cycle parking but strongly feel that [street withheld] is an inappropriate location.”

For all the reason above, in my view, almost anywhere being used to store cars can be used to store a cycle hangar.

There can be other objections like rubbish being left beside the hangar. It’s regrettable that all forms of street furniture can attract fly-tipping, but this is not unique or inherent to the hangar and can be dealt with separately.

I have also heard complaints of sightlines or lighting compromised (and therefore safety of various kinds). All proposed locations are subject to a site survey, and this considers lighting. And again, because they are lower in profile than most cars, they are likely to block light and sightlines less than what they replace.

But back to the feelings. If something is familiar, the harm it causes can become invisible or at least accepted as natural. Cycle hangars are for many people still a novelty, a foreign object, and they think they don’t know anyone who would use them. So they will actually annoy them more even if they do nothing objectively different to cars. They aren’t pretending to be annoyed, they actually are. So, I think it’s better to impress upon objectors that residents in their immediate area are waiting for these, need these, and are using the ones that already exist.

On the question of aesthetics. Here are some (I think) beautiful cycle hangars, or bike bread bins, across the City of Westminster, London, made by Cyclehoop.

Some of my beauties

So, how did we speed up delivery? As an elected politician, I'm not doing the hard yards of surveying, designing and installing. All credit to Westminster officers (the cycle parking team in particular), WSP, NRP, and Cyclehoop over many years. But from my side it's been a function of greater political prioritisation, a bigger capital budget, and more people. In other words, officers and contractors ‘brute forced’ it following a clear political will. Maybe you were hoping for that one weird hack that makes these things easier to install.

Make decisions on merit. Objections that don't have merit can be listened to, but not indulged, if you want to move faster. Officers need to have the confidence in the need for the scheme (lack of space to park a bike is a major barrier to cycling) to give their politicians good advice. Politicians must be prepared to respectfully disagree with their residents, to deliver for their other residents. Who are many in number, waiting for somewhere safe to keep a bike.

OK, so what’s actually happening with all those new cycle hangars? Currently, 94% of all spaces in on-streer hangars are rented. Another 3% are being offered to residents on the waiting list (they have two weeks to respond before we go to the next person on the list), and a further 2% of on-street spaces are available to rent immediately. Our cycle storage map shows what's available and also how many people are waiting for the next space in a particular hangar. Cycle hangars on housing estates have lower occupancy of 65%. They have a much smaller catchment as they are available only to residents on that estate.

A bonus of a bigger network of hangars is that it's more cost efficient for the local authority to run. We brought the service in house. It was previously split between Cyclehoop and Falco who you had to rent from directly with different systems. We’ve been able to start a new maintenance contract to keep the hangars in good shape. And at the same time, we’ve been able to cut the cost of rental to residents.

Until recently, parking a bike in a Westminster hangar for a year was £72. Which was £72 more expensive than parking this petrol/electric hybrid SUV (which cost £0 as a resident to park).

Now it's the other way around - the bike is £83 cheaper to park than the SUV (at £40/year), and £331 cheaper than the most polluting diesel vehicles.

I'm proud of Westminster Council's progress, on the number of spaces and the cost, but we have more to do. I think the objective (spelled out by Cllr Rezina Chowdhury) of it being cheaper for a family of four to park their bikes than a family sized car is right, and where we need to go.

One thing about cycle hangars (other than their inherent beauty, ofc) is that they are the best possible advert for themselves. It says ‘this is available, this is normal, you can do this.’ As a form of wielding power it is neither carrot nor stick but the governmental power of norm shaping. The more cycle hangars we install in Westminster the more we see demand grow. So in spite of our increase in pace of delivery there are once again almost 1,000 residents waiting for a space. Some of those people are waiting for non-standard size spaces for adapted cycles, hand cycles and cargo bikes. Whatever kind of cycle space they're waiting for, I can't wait to give them one.