Update - the bikes in question were not stolen and were in fact moved by work men to somewhere secure, Abellio Greater Anglia has said.
Bikes parked in Cambridge Railway Station’s secure CyclePoint facility were stolen last week after workers moved them and left them unlocked. An Abellio Greater Anglia spokesperson apologised and said that signs had been put up advising customers not to use some of the stands on the ground floor as they were due to be relocated.
The free-to-use £2.5m CyclePoint spans three floors and is open 24-hours a day, seven days a week. Bike parking is a combination of Sheffield stands and two-tier FalcoLevel Premium + racks which meet the Dutch national ‘FietsParkur’ standard for secure cycle parking.
Those who parked there on Friday probably hadn’t reckoned on staff unlocking their bikes and then leaving them unattended.
David Oldman told Cambridge News how his daughter’s bike had been stolen after being moved due to building work.
“My daughter left her bike locked in the cycle park overnight and returned yesterday evening (Friday) to find a notice to the effect that the bikes in the section where hers was had been moved to make way for building work.
“When she went to recover the bike from where it had been moved to, she found that all the bikes in that section had been left there unlocked and that hers had been stolen. What on earth are they thinking of?"
Britain's biggest cycle park features almost 100 state-of-the-art CCTV cameras, but it doesn’t appear to be immune to human error. The spokesperson explained how the bikes were moved by contractors.
“Contractors undertaking work at Cambridge CyclePoint on Friday evening moved some cycles, and we would like to apologise to customers who were affected. Signs were put up advising customers not to use some of the stands on the ground floor, which were due to be relocated.
“We would like to reassure customers that the CyclePoint remains a safe and secure place to store bicycles, and is equipped with comprehensive CCTV. Any customer who was affected should contact the station manager."
We have previously reported how three bikes were stolen from CyclePoint in four days in April, but the spokesperson was keen to emphasise that in general the facility is proving highly secure.
“We have had very positive feedback from cyclists using the CyclePoint at Cambridge. Triple the previous capacity, it's the biggest of its kind in the country and is used by thousands every week.
“With safe, secure, undercover cycle parking, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in a brightly lit, purpose-built facility, it makes cycling to and from the station a very attractive and convenient option."
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19 comments
It's particularly frustrating when you've just upgraded your Tarmac s-works to SRAM etape and lightweight meilenstein wheels to have it taken like that!
Abellio is particularly anti-cycling anyway from my experience.
I wonder what the building work was for anyway? probably more car parking!
"the CyclePoint remains a safe and secure place to store bicycles"
HAHAHAHAHA.
they probably went straight in the back of the contractors van
That is a ludicrous accusation to throw out there...they may be culpable as regards a duty of care, but that does not make the contractors thieves
Unreal. In a city full of professional bike thives with tools and vans, just waiting to strike.
Put claims in to Abellio for a grand a bike! They make enough from ticket hikes anyway.
Does anyone know who to contact regarding a claim? Seriously; obviously I'm not asking a grand, but legally they did owe a Duty Of Care, and when I parked my bike there were no signs yet saying not to park there. Even if there had been, their duty was to move the bikes to an equally secure location, not just rest them against a wall AND then advertise to potential thieves where to find them!
I tried searching for cambridge cyclepoint but can only find 404-notfound pages.
So people ignore signs, the workmen have to remove the bikes to do their jobs and then the idiots complain? Seems like we need some more adults in this country who can accept the consequences of their actions. No sympathy at all.
I suspect it takes about a minute to make it really really really clear that you shouldn't park on a particular rack though - cover it with warning tape for instance.
So it's either a case of signs were crap or people were crap.
I guess we'd need to see the signage before we jumped on any bandwagon, either way.
Indeed - "Signs were put up advising customers not to use some of the stands on the ground floor"
Not very specific, is it? Conjuers up an image of a few (badly) hand-written notes stuck about with single pieces of cellotape.
Pass judgement when you know what signs were in place, and where.
People cover their arse when they screw up. What was done and what was said to be done may be two different things.
Duty of care - lack of.
The common sense action by the contractors would have to put notices on the actual stands themselves to make the impending work clear to all. In any event, and accepting that it was the criminals who stole the bikes, quite how the contractors can just remove the bikes and simply leave them to be taken almost beggars belief.
If there was clear signage telling people not to use the racks then they've only got themselves to blame.
Clearly, the signs weren't clear as more than one person didn't get the message. As has already been said, a minute with hazard tape would have ensured clarity.
To remove the bikes and leave them unsecured and able to be stolen seems like negligence to me, but what does the law say on the subject? Removing someone's property from where it was secure to somewhere it was insecure without taking reasonable steps to prevent theft looks like gross negligence to me.
They seem to have committed two stupidities; not to make it clear that some parking was not to be used, and to remove bicycles to where they could easily be stolen.
If it was my bike, I'd be demanding compensation, and far be it from me to suggest that some people who didn't have a bike there might like to apply too. No, no, no, no. They might be a bit surprised if 10,000 cyclists claim so keep the numbers down to something reasonable.
I agree. I once worked in a building which warned all tenants not to leave bikes in the main hall/lobby or else they'd be removed (they could take them into their offices, but not leave them in the common areas). When people did just pile them up in the communal lobby, the landlord moved them to a locked service area and left a note saying to 'get in touch to have your bike back'.
Surely, if you remove someone's locked bike (and, presumably, use some sort of tool to do so, since however secure this place is I don't believe people just left their bikes unlocked), then you are taking responsibility for that bike.
Unless (or even) if you are a bike thief.
So, these contractors or whosoever they were contracted to, had a responsibility to (1) replace the broken locks and/or (2) secure the bikes in some place equally as secure as where they had been left locked up by these folks that morning.
Absolutely: these people left their bikes safely locked up. They have only been unlocked because of the actions of these contractors. I wouldn't think the contractors or those to whom they were contracted would have a leg to stand on, on that.
What broken locks ? It says the bikes were moved, also mentions the bike were 'unlocked' but doesn't specify how. If the bikes were locked to a single loop stand (pretty common) and you're moving that stand (which they were) - then it would probably be easiest to unbolt it and slide it off the locks... that said, if they did do that you'd have thought it would be pretty easy to reverse the process once the stand is moved. However the bottom line is that we don't know what happened from either this or the newspaper article so it might be worth seeing if anyone does before the road.cc lynch mobs fire up their torches again. What happened does sound ridiculous, but it'll not get any better with folk jumping to conclusions at every opportunity.
So you have inside knowledge that the signs went up when these racks were empty and were promiently displayed?
Was there also confirmation of where removed bikes would be kept safely and securely?
If they unlocked the bikes to move them... surely they could lock them back up?
Or did they bolt-cropper through everyones locks to move them?
Either way, someone needs a damned good b*llocking over this.