Cycle to work info

[Gandalf]

Much to my annoyance my employer refuses point blank to have anything to do with the cycle to work scheme.   

I wouldn't be eligible as I have to take my van home for callouts etc, but it is annoying nonetheless.

Like many large companies they are always keen to shout their 'Green' credentials from the rooftops and have even featured articles in the internal propaganda sheet featuring senior managers sitting on a bike for the first time in decades.

There is a bit of a bunfight going on on the internal DG at the moment, needless to say most of it is utter anti-cyclist bilge.

One of the main thrusts of the naysayers is that cycling is 'dangerous', one poster has deposited the following, but without referencing a source

Every year in this country over 15,000 cyclists are killed or injured in reported road accidents, including more than 2,300 who are killed or seriously injured.
Cyclist Casualties, 2006
Killed    146
Seriously Injured   2,296
Slightly Injured    13,754
Total    16,196

Do these figures look about right or not?

As for the company, which is one of the largest employers in the country, the reasons they give are


The vast majority of employees would not be eligible
The average uptake on the scheme is less than 1% ( don't know where they plucked that figure from or if it is correct)
The admin costs would far outweigh any benefit (I don't know what costs are involved but I thought that HMG picked up most of that)

Are they talking rubbish?

It has also been rumoured, but not officially acknowledged, that the HR dept think that cycling is inherently dangerous and are fearful of litigation.

There have also been mutterings about being liable for maintenance costs.

I'm dying to put them straight.

[Greenbank]

http://www.cyclescheme.co.uk/employer,faqs.htm

Many of the questions are answered there (although it takes close reading to realise that when they say "it's your responsibility to maintain the bike" they mean the employee not the employer).

It doesn't touch on how dangerous (or safe) cycling is.

[David Martin]

One of the main thrusts of the naysayers is that cycling is 'dangerous', one poster has deposited the following, but without referencing a source

Every year in this country over 15,000 cyclists are killed or injured in reported road accidents, including more than 2,300 who are killed or seriously injured.
Cyclist Casualties, 2006
Killed    146
Seriously Injured   2,296
Slightly Injured    13,754
Total    16,196

Do these figures look about right or not?

They look right. What you need is the figures for all transport which are a couple of orders of magnitude higher.

And the health cost/benefit

..d

[Wendy]

Here's the PACT 2001 stats comparing various forms of transport:
http://www.pacts.org.uk/policy/briefings/statistics_uk.htm

Cycling, the actual risks:
http://www.networks.nhs.uk/uploads/06/09/wardlaw.pdf

The benefits of cycling outweigh the risks 20 to 1, with cyclists on average having the health/fitness of someone 10 years younger than them, and living 2 years longer.

[Greenbank]

They look like they are from here:

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/accidents/casualtiesgbar/roadcasualtiesgreatbritain2006

Specifically Page 17 of this report: http://www.dft.gov.uk/162259/162469/221412/221549/227755/rcgb2006v1.pdf

The same numbers for Motorcyclists are:

Killed: 559
Seriously Injured: 5,885
Slight: 16,842
Total: 23,326

And for car drivers (not including passengers):

Killed: 1,066
Serious: 8,239
Slight: 105,698
Total: 115,003

Table 9 (page 106) gives casualty rates per 100 million vehicle kilometers.

For 2006 there were 3.1 deaths per 100 million cycling kilometers, 53 killed or seriously injured per 100 million cycling kilometers and 349 casualties (of any severity) per 100 million cycling kilometers.

For cars it was 0.3 deaths per 100 million cycling kilometers, 2.3 killed or seriously injured per 100 million driving kilometers and 29 casualties (of any severity) per 100 million driving kilometers.

To put these in context:-

If I commuted by bike every day (12km each way) I'd do about 5000km a year. It would take me 20,000 years to rack up 100 million kilometers, or 6451 years to reach the distance where there is, on average, one fatality.

For any casualty (down to slightly injured) whilst cycling it's still one per 286533km. That's 57 years worth of my commute.

[clarion]

Now we need to look at additional risk from the common factor diseases associated with lack of exercise - diabetes, stroke, cardiac - and consider the additional time lost to the business from car commuting.

Then, there's the time lost from the persistent late or unpredictable arrival of motorised commuters...

[teethgrinder]

Now we need to look at additional risk from the common factor diseases associated with lack of exercise - diabetes, stroke, cardiac - and consider the additional time lost to the business from car commuting.

Then, there's the time lost from the persistent late or unpredictable arrival of motorised commuters...

Car parking expense to the company. (Isn't there a £100 per car park space incurred to businesses?)
Increased productivity from better fitness.

Cycling is safer than not cycling for the reasons given by clairon.

What are the risks involved in the nature of your employment? Many people die each year in industrial accidents. Is it greater than the risks of cycling to work?

Also, the price of fuel is rising. This could price people out of being able to travel to work if they rely on a car.

You could point out that greedy travel insurance companies do not classify cycling as a dangerous activity (unless it is cycle racing in some cases, or other types of adrenaline cycling) And they would most certainly bump up their premiums if they could.

Lower levels of cars on the road and higher usage of bicyles make the roads safer for all road users. This has been proven.

Bicyle parking is much cheaper than maintaining or expanding a car park. (assumng that your company has one)

[mr endon]

The DfT, quoted by Lynn Sloman in "Car Sick..", give a cost to the provider of a single car-parking space of £300 - £500 per annum. Or rather 'gave': this figure is some years out of date now. I understand it's £700 in Leeds, £1K+ in London.
Effectively, free workplace parking is a subsidy to employees who choose to commute by private car. Bear that in mind next time your employer tells you there's no money to make good on its policy commitment to facilitate active and sustainable commuting choices by its employees.

[mattc]

The DfT, quoted by Lynn Sloman in "Car Sick..", give a cost to the provider of a single car-parking space of £300 - £500 per annum. Or rather 'gave': this figure is some years out of date now. I understand it's £700 in Leeds, £1K+ in London.

I wonder how cheap it is where land is cheap - I'm thinking of out of town business "parks". I'm sure it's still substantial, but has to be less than in a city.

Also, there is a problem with small companies - we, for example, pay rent in a building which sorts out car parking (and some cycle parking - yay!) inclusively. So my employer can never make a saving by reducing the parking "subsidy".

[mrcharly-YHT]

I understand it's £700 in Leeds, £1K+ in London.

We moved offices in Leeds last year and were informed that a single car space was around £2700 pa.

b'stewards still wouldn't put up a bike shed for the 5 people who cycle to work.

[iakobski]

The DfT, quoted by Lynn Sloman in "Car Sick..", give a cost to the provider of a single car-parking space of £300 - £500 per annum. Or rather 'gave': this figure is some years out of date now. I understand it's £700 in Leeds, £1K+ in London.

I wonder how cheap it is where land is cheap - I'm thinking of out of town business "parks". I'm sure it's still substantial, but has to be less than in a city.

It's much more than the figures above. A business park may be surrounded by fields, but still has a boundary. If you own land in a business park, would you build another block of office space on it and rent for £50k or park 20 cars on it? The out-of-town business park I once worked on paid exactly £1000/year for overspill spaces nearby. They still couldn't see the point in providing anywhere to lock bikes up!

The £2700 quoted for a space in Leeds sounds about right. Land in London is around £10 million a hectare. Probably an order of magnitude higher than Leeds.

[teethgrinder]

We moved offices in Leeds last year and were informed that a single car space was around £2700 pa.

b'stewards still wouldn't put up a bike shed for the 5 people who cycle to work.

Are there any spare parking spaces left at work? If not, then I'd get the 5 of you to drive to work early and block up 5 parking spaces. Just keep doing it until they build you your cycle parking.
Or you could just do a DIY effort and stick it in a parking bay.
I'm lucky where I work. My bike stays in the warehouse where it is safe and warm, all snuggled up in the corner, waiting for me to ride it home. It lives in it's own room in my flat too.

[Greenbank]

Alternatively...

Put bike in car.
Drive to work.
Leave car in car park.
Cycle home.

From then on, cycle into work and store your bike in your car during the day, and cycle home.

[nitpickles]

Alternatively...

Put bike in car.
Drive to work.
Leave car in car park.
Cycle home.

From then on, cycle into work and store your bike in your car during the day, and cycle home.

Good call. Or you could just leave your speedboat at work.

[rower40]

Good call. Or you could just leave your speedboat at work.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

In the dim and distant past when I had a car, I'd been volunteered to tow the rowing club's trailer (containing several rowing boats, oars, and various other bits and pieces) to a regatta on a Saturday.  It was far enough away that we didn't want to load the trailer that morning, so we needed somewhere secure to leave the trailer after loading the night before.

My work's loading bay was a perfect location; invisible from the road, and with a security presence.  We stacked the boats on the trailer on Friday evening, I towed it to work, and then Bromptoned home, leaving car and trailer.  Then picked it up at stupid-o-clock on the Saturday.

(OK, not technically a speedboat, but hey...)

[teethgrinder]

You remind me of an idea I have for storing my bicycles.
The flat which I live in, which I am paying a mortgage for, comes with a designated parking space.
I don't have a car and I suspect that I can't erect a shed there, because it would be in the terms and conditions of the lease.
But I could leave a vehicle there. I have thought about buying a scrapped transit van, then boarding up the windows and securing it, possibly with wheel clamps and removing the battery etc, to make it difficult to remove, then using it as a shed to store all of my bikes.
Has anyone done it, or know someone who has?

[Notsototalnewbie]

I am in the same situation as you with flat with parking space etc (although not a designated one, just the chance to get a permit and leave a vehicle where there is a space).

If I did what you suggested, I can guarantee Lambeth council would come and remove the van due to it not being taxed. And it couldn't be taxed as it wouldn't have MOT/insurance. But then they are barstewards.

So my studio flat comes with bikes as a feature.

[Greenbank]

I can guarantee Lambeth council would come and remove the van due to it not being taxed.

If it is parked off the road and SORNed then there's nothing they could do.

[Notsototalnewbie]

I think the parking spaces we have here (on an estate) are their property though.

When I had my car they used to make it clear that I wouldn't be allowed a permit unless I could show them the tax was valid, SORN was not an option.

[rogerzilla]

The DfT, quoted by Lynn Sloman in "Car Sick..", give a cost to the provider of a single car-parking space of £300 - £500 per annum. Or rather 'gave': this figure is some years out of date now. I understand it's £700 in Leeds, £1K+ in London.

Isn't that mostly the opportunity cost of the land, though?  No-one is seriously thinking of selling our car park and allowing another firm to build right up to the office windows.  If you're building or buying a *new* office, yes, parking space costs money, but it's a sunk cost once you're there.

Maintenance is pretty negligible; resurfacing probably won't be necessary during the life of the building (20-30 years) and only the access roads are normally salted or gritted, not the actual spaces.

[mr endon]

Sure there'll be situations where what you say is true. Nobody's suggesting that there's much realisable value locked up in a strip of land under your office windows, currently given to car parking.
But my LA employer has a 4 acre patch of prime development land given over to @600 car parking spaces, at HQ alone, and has elsewhere demonstrated an enthusiastic, one might almost say 'voracious', appetite for flogging assets.
So a staff sports facility - playing field and clubhouse with changing rooms and showers; not as grand as it sounds - was flogged off to housing developers to raise money some years ago, without any of that money being used to provide alternative facilities elsewhere. The three buildings on the site where I work are being vacated with a view to realising the millions of pounds the land will fetch.
>£2 million per acre is my best guess for this car park. Slap £8 million in the building society and at 6% that's @ £480,000 off the collective council tax bill. This is Northumberland, population @300,000. That would be a few quid off the bill of that proportion of 300,000 who pay council tax. Alternatively the same outcome would be achieved by requiring the motorist to cover the cost of his provision by paying for his parking; that might encourage car sharing.
But we'd rather the Northumbrian council tax payer provided a measurable financial inducement to 600 staff to eschew public transport or active transport alternatives and drive to work.
And our Transport Policy says: we'll discourage over-reliance on the private car, set an example as employers in the way we support sustainable and active travel choices by our commuting staff.
Spend last year, and every one of the 8 years since this became policy, on encouraging active and sustainable commuting by Council employees: £0....
 

[rogerzilla]

Our new, larger, non-leaking bike shed was shelved when the current management team took over (the chief exec doesn't like sport, or so he says).  Ten years ago commuters had their own changing room and showers; nowadays we share with the gym users.  On the positive side, there is a half-hearted Bike2Work week and, following a spate of bike thefts, the shed now has combination locks on the doors, although these break with depressing regularity.