Cycle Shelter

Collapsing fuel reserves and intense international pressure on developed countries to curb CO2 emissions have filtered down to Local Education Authorities in the form of Travel Plan Grants.  Travel Plan Grants are awards handed out by LEAs to schools that can prove they have implemented a workable “travel plan” to replace the carbon-heavy school run.  The grants are designed to assist schools in making structural improvements to aid the travel plan – improvements like a large-load cycle shelter.

Cycling is the most energy efficient and resource-light form of human transport.  It’s noiseless, it’s clean and it’s great exercise – suggesting that the alternative travel plans of schools might be able to address more problems than just CO2 emissions.  For schools to successfully cope with an increasing volume of bicycles, they need storage facilities – a cycle shelter capable of protecting and storing pupil’s machines while they are in classes. 

A suitable cycle shelter needs to be large enough to accommodate high numbers of bicycles without impairing access either to the machines or the rest of the school.  It’s no good having a big cycle shelter if bikes at the back can’t be got to, or pupils whose bikes are in certain positions find it hard to get out of the shelter to go on to lessons.  In which case a workable school cycle shelter is either going to be planned and laid out as long rows of individual units (each unit being a standalone cycle shelter with its own access):  or an open-plan cycle shelter with discrete covered areas.

The major purpose of a cycle shelter is to protect bikes from elements and thieves.  The bicycle is clean, but it’s also fragile:  rain rusts chains, brakes and gears.  Without a good cycle shelter onsite, an initiative to encourage pupils to ride to school is pointless.  Parents spending as much money on rain-damaged bikes as they did on fuel would spell instant collapse of such a scheme.

Thieves are a major problem:  a bicycle has no engine, so once it’s stolen it’s gone.  A suitable cycle shelter will have individual lockable stands or even upright bike “lockers”, in which machines can be placed standing on their rear wheel.  Siting of the cycle shelter is also important.  A school cycle shelter should be situated where it can be seen from administrative offices at all times, for two reasons:  visibility prevents theft, and it discourages the cycle shelter from being used like the “bike sheds” of old, where pupils traditionally repaired to conduct the nefarious businesses of smoking, necking and fighting.

Done properly, a school cycle shelter offers a real alternative to gridlock, petrol fumes and unnecessary car journeys.  With a good plan and a healthy grant, the bike sheds could be back:  but used, this time, for a proper purpose.