Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1540
- 1559)
1540. Can I quickly run through the final two
sections of this exhibit, which is page three, please.[4]
I think this simply makes your point once again, does it not,
that the New York Metro is a case where they do not have any sort
of ban and yet this is a heavily congested, narrow and difficult
to move around in system.
(Mr Holladay) I think it almost speaks for itself.
There has never been any major protest, and there are some strong
transport lobby groups operating in New York, about the facilities
available on the New York subway. It is a pragmatic system. The
passengers are pragmatic; if they cannot get onto a train they
wait for the next one. The advice is designed on a pragmatic basis:
choose express trains because they have fewer stops, less boarding
and alighting. Indeed, if you have a bicycle it is quite likely
you will want to go on a train with fewer stops because you can
cycle to the station over a longer distance so you would not necessarily
go for the intermediate stations which tend to be the lower grade
stations with the six foot high turnstile gates and you cannot
get the bikes through in any case, you would tend to go for the
main stations because you have got the pass gates.
1541. BARONESS FOOKES: Under the New
York Metro, number two, it says: "For easier trips, use lettered
trains". Could you just describe what that means?
(Mr Holladay) You will be familiar with taking the A train
to Hull, about which there was a musical piece. The trains with
letters tend to be the express services and the trains with numbers
tend to be the stopping services.
1542. I see. So it really means it is an express
train?
(Mr Holladay) Yes. The express network uses letters.
1543. BARONESS FOOKES: Thank you.
1544. MR PECK: Moving on to the issue
of cycle parking, we have seen the Promoters' Exhibit 3—
1545. CHAIRMAN: Just before you go on
to that, Mr Holladay, are these various restrictions enforced
by byelaws, or how are they enforced, or not at all?
(Mr Holladay) In which one?
1546. Take the New York Metro, for instance.
(Mr Holladay) The byelaw that they would enforce would be,
"You are causing an obstruction and causing a nuisance to
other passengers". That is the way they would deal with an
issue on a bicycle as far as I understand the wording of that.
1547. But there is not a detailed byelaw?
(Mr Holladay) No, there tends to be a problem with detailed
byelaws.
1548. LORD YOUNG OF NORWOOD GREEN: This
works on what you are describing as the consent approach?
(Mr Holladay) Yes.
1549. If the Metro happens to be jam-packed
with other passengers you are unlikely to try and get your bike
on. I must admit, I have travelled a lot of times on the New York
Metro and I have not seen a bike but I take your word for it.
Maybe it is because they tend to take the express routes. It works
on the basis of turn up and commonsense prevails?
(Mr Holladay) I think the very fact that Merseyrail dropped
their cycle ban regime and just operated on consent shows that
it seems to work. With a folding bike I have had problems. My
brother-in-law and sister live --- I have struggled from Finsbury
Park Station trying to board a Moorgate train that has been reduced
to three coaches with a folding bike and had to wait for three
trains until there was even room to get on the train and had to
stand on top of the bike in order to fit on the train. There is
this sort of self-regulation and in Glasgow we say, "You
will get more than your ticket punched if you try and get on with
a bike on that train".
1550. LORD YOUNG OF NORWOOD GREEN: A
Glasgow kiss!
1551. MR PECK: Exhibit 3 of the Promoters'
exhibits establishes the current stance on cycle parking at the
central area stations.[5]
Would you say that the decision not to have any provision whatsoever
at Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street is a sensible provision?
(Mr Holladay) I would say that it is potentially
flawed because the effect of demand being there when no provision
is made is quite amazing to watch. The existing stations have
a problem in that, as I noted earlier, the survey done by CTC
for the SRA was probably the first time that some stations realised
how many bikes were parking there. We observe it all the time
at Waterloo particularly because of the distances involved and
because of the poor connections from Waterloo to some London destinations.
Obviously it is very difficult to get across London when you have
only got a limited number of Tube lines. People are turning to
the bike. If you care to sit in exit three of Waterloo Station
at times you can count up to four folding bikes and a number of
conventional non-folding bikes exiting through that arch because
that is the most direct route out onto the road and I would estimate
there would probably be ten to 20 per cent of the people going
out through that arch using bikes. We do not have a handle on
it. We are attempting to have a handle on it. Possibly the statement
that no provision is needed in certain places or there is adequate
provision with a little bit of work with the local authority suggests
there needs to be more detailed work done. At St Pancras Station,
for example, the Thameslink blockade saw a 1,000 per cent increase
in parked bicycles in two months. It went from five bicycles to
50 in two months simply because people saw that as a way to overcome
the problem. When you have Tottenham Court Road Station and Farringdon
Station principally as the means to get from Crossrail to Eurostar,
Euston and King's Cross Stations, you have got a choice of changing
trains for one or two stops or cycling. In terms of journey time
and convenience, cycling is going to be the way to make that journey
because you do not have to wait the six or seven minutes for a
Tube train to turn up, you can immediately get up on to your bike
and do the journey in under five minutes. People with common sense
or those who are keen to make progress will be looking to bike
to make those connections. Typically, from my own experience I
do a journey from Euston to Waterloo and it takes me 12 minutes
on a bike almost consistently whereas the recommended time by
changing trains and using public transport is nearer 50. It is
going to be something that is driven very much by demand wanting
to do that. To say that no parking provision is needed at Tottenham
Court Road is very weak. There will be a big demand for people
to get up to Euston, St Pancras, Tottenham Court Road and Farringdon.
There is the possibility, I think, of looking externally. For
example, I am aware of car parks in those areas which are under-utilised
now the Congestion Charge has come in, so there may be a possibility
of looking towards cycle parking adjacent to stations in the interim.
The most important thing is actually a convenient direct link.
This is why, for example, at some stations, like Liverpool Street,
fewer people use the cycle park than use the railings and lampposts
on Liverpool Street and on Bishopsgate because that is the direct
route they want to go. The way to deal with that is to actually
plan for it and manage it rather than, "Oh, suddenly we have
got a problem with parked bikes all over our railings, what do
we do? Do we have to police it?" and then you get confrontation.
Is that sufficient for that? I have described that we have a number
of stations where statements are made but actually as to knowing
the existing position, very few people know what the existing
position is. I think the only station that can definitely say
they know about the people who park the bikes at the station is
Marylebone, because everybody has to register their bike there;
all the other London stations have no clue as to who is parking
and when it comes to moving bikes they have a big row because
bikes are moved and they cannot trace the owners.
1552. MR PECK: Can I ask what discussions
you have been having and your organisation has been having with
Network Rail authorities and First Great Western at Paddington
Station with regards to the cycle parking there, which is claimed
by the Promoters as already being provided by Network Rail?
(Mr Holladay) The cycle parking at Paddington Station is
heavily over-subscribed but, again, because they do not know who
the users are there are a number of factors that could be developed.
It is also open cycle parking and vulnerable to vandalism. Studies
by the University of the West of England have revealed that it
is quite likely that a lot of those bikes are only used once or
twice a week—people keep them there for the convenience
of having a bike, and no doubt there are other places in this
city where people keep a bike for convenience and it sits there
most of the week and nobody knows anything about it. We have been
working both with First Great Western and also with the Network
Rail Management at Waterloo to persuade the people who are using
the station to identify themselves, much in the same way as Marylebone
registers the people who are using Marylebone Station with bikes.
First Great Western have come on board with this and with the
London Cycling Campaign and with CTC and they are going to be
running an event at Paddington Station to try to identify who
is using Paddington Station with a bike. We suspect that at least
twice as many people as the parked bikes are using Paddington
Station because of the steady flow of folding bikes that come
off the trains; and in addition during the daytime when bikes
are permitted bikes also flow off the trains in large numbers.
You will find that, for example, Westminster is probably a 15
or 20 minute bike ride from Paddington, so it becomes a much quicker
way of getting across town. We hope, with working with people
like First Great Western, that we can get more of a handle on
the demand now and get a picture of what the demand in future
is likely to be; but at the moment to say that we already have
parking provision, it is heavily over-subscribed, the use is unknown
and it is difficult to say whether it will be overloaded completely
with people hopping off Crossrail.
1553. At Farringdon Station—this will
be the crossover between Thameslink 2000 and Crossrail and that
will be a very important station as you will be able to reach
most of the London airports from it—is the provision of
a little bit of on-street parking by Islington Council going to
be enough?
(Mr Holladay) I do not think that is going
to quite cope with it. I can visualise people making regular journeys
wanting to park bikes securely at Farringdon. Again, the benefit
of being able to walk straight out and jump on a bike—for
example, at Farringdon you may want to do a two-stop to Moorgate
or you may be going down into the City—and make that journey
in five, six minutes rather than wait for the tube—the Circle
Line frequency is every seven to ten minutes so you would be waiting
at least five or six minutes for a train to turn up to get there,
and then I think it is six minutes to Moorgate—then the
difference between waiting for a train, catching a train and jumping
straight out on to a bike when you know it is going to take you
pretty much the same time every time is going to be very attractive.
Plus, of course, you have a major traffic of people who are regularly
going up towards St Pancras and King's Cross, so do they go through
corridors up on to Farringdon, getting a train to what is now
St Pancras Midland low level, or do they just leap up on to the
surface and head for their train? There will be a strong demand
on that, as we experienced obviously with the Thameslink blockade.
1554. In the third section of our exhibit B,
I enclose the Mayor of London's press release a few weeks ago
about the £5 million funding for cycling.[6]
One of the sections in that, which is halfway down, talks about
a new implementation of an on-street cycle hire scheme similar
to that currently in Paris, and it provides 6000 bicycles with
docking stations every 300 metres through central London, and
emphasised key destinations such as railway stations. Transport
for London and the Mayor's Office is also clear that where they
will provide these docking stations they will also be providing
additional on-street cycle parking for non-cycle hire users. Given
that this is going to occur in 2010 do you not feel that TfL should
be ensuring, through Crossrail, that this is dovetailed with the
Crossrail proposals?
(Mr Holladay) I believe that the combination
of bicycle and rail has major benefits both in the flexibility
and also the ability to provide the capacity. We have talked of
Farringdon where you have to make connections and capacity in
the interchanges, which is costing a lot of money, whereas the
ability to provide capacity and interchange with bicycles, and
on foot where appropriate—but the bicycles particularly
because of the distance you can cover—the connection is
quickly implemented at relatively low cost without delays. Hence
when the Waterloo and City Line closure was on, people were able
to quickly instigate their own alternative transport system because
of the closure of the tube line; likewise at the Thameslink blockade
they were able to implement it quickly. With the hire stations
we move to actually make more efficient use of the space. As I
noted with Paddington, it is quite likely that between ten and
20 per cent of the bikes at Paddington are only used once or twice
a week and those are the very users that we would target to say
that they should be hiring bikes. Additionally—and TfL may
not appreciate it so much—a London commuter who does use
a hire bike is quite likely to find a comparable pricing point,
that it is more convenient than the Tube and they would be prepared
to pay the same amount as the Tube for that convenience, which,
for a London commuter, is around £500 a year. So effectively
you could say that a bicycle kept securely in London and dispensed
when you need it is worth around £500 a year to a London
commuter as an alternative to the London zone card.
1555. Would it be useful if TfL and Crossrail
commissioned an analysis of the time savings and the benefits
to cyclists, given that one in 20 trips in London will be made
by bike, we hope, at around the time that Crossrail will be operational?
Would it be useful to have a time savings study?
(Mr Holladay) I think a study of this
would be very relevant. The claim of Crossrail is that it is going
to improve people's journey times by six to eight minutes, I think,
on certain journeys into central London, whereas we, with the
Keep Cycling on Track Campaign last year, went through a number
of people's journeys and found that a typical London commuter
would save in the region of 30 minutes on a typical London journey
into and out of London. In fact the example we found was a man
who was saving 40 minutes on a journey between Redhill and Stratford,
simply because he was able to take his bike on the train, alight
at London Bridge and cycle to Liverpool Street for a direct train,
and at the other end a 15 minute walk was turned into a five minute
bike ride. So I think an analysis of how cycling will have that
impact will give you some concept in sizing and looking at the
requirement for cycle parking and cycle hire at some of the inner
stations because it is not being covered and from the evidence
of the demand increasing, which we have pictorially—unfortunately
I could not go around and count every single bike at Waterloo
every time I was doing a survey—we are talking of several
hundred bikes in all sorts of places as well. The evidence is
that cycle use is increasing dramatically where those gains are
made and a bar chart showing the connection losses ... I will
go into a thing about Dutch Railways where they were looking at
time-saving on journeys, and far cheaper than making trains run
a little bit faster it was actually to eliminate the delays and
the waiting on connections. If you know that it is two minutes
to jump on a bike and ride instead of a potential seven minute
wait for the next tube train then obviously you make a faster
journey by jumping on a bike.
1556. So if one could imagine that a potential
journey on Crossrail would be someone coming into Tottenham Court
Road, for instance, and wishing to get to King's Cross or St Pancras,
it would be quicker and cheaper for them to use a TfL provided
free bike and cycle the five minute journey to King's Cross than
to interchange on to the Tube?
(Mr Holladay) Almost certainly it would
be because it would cut out that connection time. I think this
has to be recognised in the provisions for this project, otherwise
we end up with a disjointed situation, as we did at St Pancras,
where only the eleventh hour provision of cycle parking really
sorted out matters. There was due to be a protest at St Pancras—somewhat
upstaged by Greenpeace unfortunately—all about the fact
that the station had gone ahead without recognition that there
was a substantial amount of cycle parking taking place and no
formal recognition of providing for that in the re-opened station.
1557. Can you confirm that the lack of cycle
parking at the St Pancras International Station was as a result
of a failure to include that at an early stage of the process?
(Mr Holladay) It was very much an afterthought.
The original location for the cycle parking was far away on the
north corner of the site, and representations have actually brought
it into the station. That said, it is still a long way from the
trains and in the wrong direction for most people's journeys—they
have to walk away from where they want to go to to pick up their
bike after alighting from the train. So the tendency still is
at St Pancras that you will see bicycles chained to lampposts
on Pancras Road and on Camden Council land down towards King's
Cross, simply because it is still a long way to go to where the
cycle parking has been added as an afterthought, rather than being
designed in as a convenient interchange. It always is the case
that where things are designed in as an afterthought that the
use tends to require confrontational policing—you cannot
park your bike here, you have to park it there and carry it further
round; it is far better to have regimes that actually form naturally.
So very much like at Waterloo the popular place to park is actually
a very good place to park, so lots of people use it.
1558. There are aspects of increased demand
for on-street cycle parking. Your Lordships may be aware that
at Millbank the City of Westminster has been installing much more
cycle parking in the last few years. I walked past this morning
and there are now spaces for 100 bikes along Millbank before you
get to Horseferry Road. It is pretty heavily used. Given these
aspects of increased demand some other alternatives in addition
to on-street parking could be secure, pay for cycle parking, and
to examine this exhibit B, sections 1 and 2 have some solutions
used by the Bay Area of the transit system again. BART, at least
three of their stations offer free secure, covered cycle parking,
which is available in a manned shelter.[7]
This, I believe, is occurring in one place in London at the moment,
in Finsbury Park. There is also a proposal from the Holborn Business
Improvement District for a similar thing for commuter cyclists
in Camden. They are going to put in an underground shelter which
will be paid for by cyclists, which will have changing facilities
and showers. These things are springing up elsewhere in London
as well—London Bridge Station has a bike shop which is looking
at setting up an underground parking facility. Could this be an
option for various parts of Crossrail, do you think, in the long-term,
private initiatives perhaps subsidised by other areas of TfL?
(Mr Holladay) I believe that there are opportunities
here; I believe that we need to ensure that such opportunities
are carefully monitored and understood in any process. The growth
is fairly evident where things are monitored. On-street parking,
I am not quite aware with what is going on with Westminster Council
with their on-street parking, but I am aware of the programme
that has been running in Glasgow where, since 2000, they have
monitored putting bicycle parking in there, installing in the
region of 300 bicycle parking spaces a year and they are measuring
37 per cent year on year growth of parked bikes. Parked bikes
is a very good measure of the number of cycle trips being made.
Likewise, studies have gone on of secure cycle parking; people
will pay for it and there are a number of schemes in the offing,
and also a number of means of looking at pricing this and demand
for it.
1559. The only drawback as far as you are concerned
about Finsbury Park is the distance from the station.
(Mr Holladay) I think Finsbury Park has certain flaws to
it in the sense that again it was an afterthought and it was not
designed in as part of the station; it has been built on land
that is more convenient to use than trying to put it into the
station itself, build it into the station. When you look at the
bike stations on BART the bike stations have been built on to
a corresponding Caltrain network, which are actually built into
the station. If you go to the Netherlands you will also see that
the rail company has built these facilities into the station,
so that the transfers are fast and rapid and it is a fully integrated
system.
4 Committee Ref: A6, CTC Exhibit A: Cycle carriage
policies on similar light and heavy rail underground railways-New
York Metro (LINEWD-93_05-003) Back
5
Crossrail Ref: P13, Cycle parking at stations (LINEWD-93_04-006) Back
6
Committee Ref: A6, "Mayor unveils programme to transform
cycling and walking in London" Mayor of London press release,
11 February 2008 (LINEWD-93_05-007) Back
7
Committee Ref: A6, CTC Exhibit B: Cycle parking policies at public
transport systems (LINEWD-93_05-005) Back
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