Cambridge Station Cyclepoint - anyone used it?

[Morrisette]

Cambridge Station has a new Cyclepoint - an indoor bike park underneath the new Category B prison Ibis Hotel. It has double-decker racks, it has stairs to wheel your bike up, it has blind corners and pillars and dingy stairwells and plenty of places for muggers to hide.  It feels really unsafe at night as it's basically a multi-storey with all the usual issues, plus a doorway that is round the back in the car park and unlit.
It won an award (!) at the Cycle Rail awards which just shows how bad the competition was in my opinion. The Cambridge Cycle Campaign caved in to supporting this bad design on the basis that we were never going to get anything better (at which point I resigned my membership) and are now shouting about how great it is but it's worse than what was there before! The parking at Cam was always chaotic but at least when it was outside the front of the station you had clear sight-lines and it felt pretty safe.

I had a look in there when it opened and couldn't work out (a) how to lock a bike to the lower of the stacked racks so it was in any way secure, or (b) how to access the upper ones at all.

Has anyone used it?

[ElyDave]

last time I went through there on the train I gave it a close look and thought "how the f*&k am I supposed to use that!".

If everything you say is true, I won't bother

[Kim]

It won an award (!) at the Cycle Rail awards which just shows how bad the competition was in my opinion.

Three words:

Birmingham.  New.  Street.


I've ranted about the Cycle Rail Awards before, and how they have categories for everything except travelling with a bicycle on trains.

[Tim Hall]

Got a picture of the double decker rack?  The ones down these parts are easy enough to lock to.

[spokenword]

Daughter always used it last year when coming home from Uni for the weekend and had no problems handling a steel hybrid ( she's only 5' 2'' ). But she did  have her front wheel perloined from outside her gaff even though it had a security skewer.

[Gareth Rees]

I use it regularly. I like it much better than the old cycle parking — with the old cycle parking it was simply never possible to get a space (at least at the times when I arrived) and so I always had to wander around the car park looking for some bit of fence to attach the bike to. No doubt the new parking will fill up eventually, but as yet, I haven't even had to go to the top floor to find a space.

The new parking is also covered from the rain, and your bike doesn't get all sticky from the lime trees. I take your point about it feeling unsafe but at least as long as the trains are running there always seem to be lots of people parking and retrieving their bikes.

I'm able-bodied, so I always use the upper tier of racks (leaving the lower tier for people who might not be able to lift their bikes). On the upper tier, there are two loops for locking, so I bring two locks and attach the rear wheel and triangle to one and the front wheel and frame to the other. (But maybe this is overkill and no-one would want to steal my crappy bike anyway.)

[Morrisette]

I've had an absolute heap of a bike stolen in Cambridge before (not from the station though), crapness is no protection!!

I didn't know there were loops for locking on the upper tier - just at a glance you can't really see how you would do it. It would be a good idea for the bike shop in the hotel to have a demo rack that you could try out.

As far as safety goes, simple things like concave mirrors on the stairwells would help, but they don't seem that interested in doing things like this (i.e. things that would help their customers) at the station. The whole redevelopment has been a four year (and counting) exercise in hiding the bike parking and replacing it with a block-paved taxi rank.The area outside the front is supposed to be a piazza with pavement cafes, little trees and public artworks. There's no space for any of that as it's filled with double-parked cabs.

I agree it is less sticky in the Cyclepoint.