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Bike hangar criticised by residents (Veloris Ballingall/Facebook)"Ridiculous" bike hangar "will cause more accidents" on street where "there have been more than five car crashes", resident claims — but council defends "popular" bicycle storage
A council has defended one of its bike hangars from criticism after residents claimed it would "cause more accidents" and is a "health and safety nightmare" — the local authority pointing out there were no objections to the on-street bicycle storage during a period of planning and consultation with the local community, and stating that there have been "hundreds of requests from across the city" for more bike hangars.
The BBC has published the views of a Tokar Street resident and her grandson, the pair objecting to Portsmouth City Council installing a bike hangar on the street near a junction, the bicycle storage unit taking the place of a former car parking space.
Housing between four to six bikes depending on the design, spaces in the hangars that have been installed across the city can be rented for £30 per year (a charge the council says is to cover the cost of cleaning and maintenance) and offer residents a secure place to keep their bike if they do not have space at their property.
As has been seen in numerous other cities across the country, demand has been high and the council said it had received "hundreds of requests from across the city" for more units to be offered. However, as has also been seen across the country, it is the complaints of a few residents that have made headlines, similar objections having been heard in Brighton and Bath in recent times.
One Tokar Street resident objected to the bike hangar being placed "directly outside my property" and told the BBC that it "needs to be removed" as it is "ridiculous" and would "cause more accidents". Veloris Ballingall, 75, said she had lived in the street for 40 years and had seen "more than five car crashes on the corner of the street".
She claimed the council had "given no warning about this" and her grandson Owen also took to social media to complain that the council was "refusing to remove it".
"My grandmother doesn't ride a bike, so she won't use it," he said. "It should be put somewhere where it is accessible properly and not on a junction. It's too bulky and a health and safety nightmare."
Portsmouth City Council refutes the claim residents were not warned and said the "usual process to advertise the plans received no objections".
A spokesperson added: "Bike hangars offer safe, secure, bike storage for Portsmouth residents who don't have that space in their home. We have had hundreds of requests from across the city and these dictate where we develop plans and consult with the local area. With Tokar Street we carried out our usual process to advertise the plans which received no objections.
> Bike hangars are "woke" (apparently) as car parking row rumbles on
"It has proven a popular location and like most hangars in the city we've received far more applications to use it than there are spaces."
Elsewhere in the city, the council began a bike hangar pilot in 2021, eight roads getting a storage unit between March and September. The Liberal Democrat-run council said the trial prompted "requests for more cycle storage" and a second phase of installations came in February 2023.
"If the scheme continues to be popular we will seek further funding to further expand bike hangars to other roads in the city. If you would like to rent a space in a bike hangar but don't live near the roads selected for the pilot you can nominate your road for a hangar in the future," the council's website states.
The outspoken complaints mirror what has been aired elsewhere in the country. Along the coast, Brighton & Hove City Council has heard criticism from residents and a councillor over the city's bike hangars, the local politician branding a bike storage facility a "monstrosity".
The council also said it would investigate the placement of a cycle hangar causing outrage with parking permit holders who said it was "deliberately" blocking car spaces, that coming as another resident took to the local press to say she does not want one of the "giant ugly objects" outside her house.
In Bath, a resident called the newly installed bike hangars "green measles" and claimed they would "make Unesco's decision [about the city's World Heritage status] so much simpler".
That despite Unesco noting on its website that Bath "remains vulnerable to transport pressures", with "improved transport" based around public transport and pedestrianisation part of the management plan to protect the city's integrity and authenticity as a World Heritage site.
And while cycling is not mentioned explicitly, the advised shift to walking and a "bus-based network" implies the "need for improved transport" will not be answered by overdependence on car use.
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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40 comments
Huge design error. Should be shaped like a Range Rover.
Great: there are several car-parking spaces on the road outside my flat, but I don't drive a car. I assume they will be removed forthwith.
And while we're at it, I only need a metre of road to ride on, so could I please have 7/8 of whatever proportion of the various taxes I pay that goes towards the roads back as well?
I'll have 7/8ths of the driver's road tax that they pay and I don't, please.
Good - but don't forget the several hundred other cyclists travelling each hour, adapted cycles etc. How about "we've taken 1.5m each side for pedestrians, 4.5 metres for bi-directional cycle path with buffer, and motorists can use the rest"?
I was involved in installing several hundred of these bike hangars in central London. And had to deal with the consultations. It was quite common to get the 'they will cause more crashes' complaint. Plus the 'eyesore' complaint. My favourite was the 'drug dealers'. A considerable amount of complaints that bike hangars attract drug dealers. The consultations we did were rigorous (for a relativley simple piece of street furniture) so any complaint about drug dealing would involved Community Safety, street wardens and even Police. We never found any evidence of it. It was almost like an apocryphal tale; the bike hangar and the street dealer.
So exactly like the other complaints.
That regularly comes up round my way (I'm not involved with them, just sometimes glance at the consultations). It doesn't seem to occur to the objecters that hangars are almost exclusively sited on residential streets in well-lit areas overlooked by dozens of flats/houses, the very last sort of location a drug dealer wants to hang out. In fact the main evidence of drug dealing around my neighbourhood is chaps in very expensive BMW SUVs with blacked out windows parked up and occasionally passing packages to/taking money from young lads on mopeds who then presumably go and "re-up" (I got that from The Wire) the street dealers. I'm sure those who object to bike hangars as alleged dealer magnets would also be happy with banning street parking on the same basis, or at least banning large SUVs?
when you're selling EPO it's so convenienjt to get all your customers in one place
Peddling it, surely?
How would they have attracted drug dealers?
Drug dealers don't want their bikes stolen any more than the rest of us.
Do motorists have the same difficulties avoiding the brick-built planter on the other side of the road junction? It seems to have a similar profile.
We have quite a few of these in my street. But there's a waiting list for places in them. I'd like it if the motorcycle bays were alongside them too.
POINT OF ORDER. That's only HALF a parking space.
They haven't got it yet.
It's OK but could be better. They've put it - with TBF the extra movements - in the last parking space, nearly across the pavement from a window.
There places near that corner where there is a blank garden wall 2 or 3 spaces down, where it would have been even better.
There are also "first spaces in the inset bay" where it would be protected by the tree, and be a part of a single visual block, not a new visual block.
If it is a couple of spaces in from the end, it's also protected by the hoon-mobile closest to the corner.
And I'd put in a couple of stout bollards that can be sure to cause major damage to any vehicle that hits it, rather than the cycle hangar.
Thank you for a new acronym Veloris: NIMFY, Not In My Front Yard.
Grandson "will cause more accidents" Why? It's no bigger than a car which could legally be parked there.
Also Grandson "It's too bulky and a health and safety nightmare." Just like all the cars?
The length and depth of motornomativity is profound and depressing. People make statements in good faith, unable to see that what they are saying is complete nonsense.
Not really just like all the cars, it is not likely to contain up to 15 gallons of flammable liquid or jump out into the road without warning.
I've always wondered why these hangers have no reflective elements on the ends, they can be hard to spot on dark streets asap cyclist or driver.
Presumably because any attempt to make them more visible runs into the desire of people not to see them as they're "eyesores"? (Agree with you BTW, will check what local ones have).
You can actually buy Black reflective tape (which weirdly reflects white) and Green replective tape that reflects, erm Green, so if they wanted to have descrete reflective options they are available.
Allow me to introduce you to the black parked car.
Which have reflectors on them.
If there have been multiple crashes at that spot the issue is drivers not being able to control their vehicles properly, rather than whatever is parked there. However, if I was a bike owner I would be concerned if there have been multiple crashes that a vehicle will hit the hanger and ultimately damage my bike.
Looking at Google Maps the intersecting roads where this hangar sits seem to be lined on both sides with parked cars. Maybe they should make it parking on only one side of the road to make it safer for everyone rather than one large car park.
Veloris Ballingall (superb name!) needs to look for the clues in her own words: she doesn't like it "directly outside my property". It's "outside" your property Mrs B, so you don't really have any more right to object to it than anybody else. I don't like people parking big vans directly outside my property because it blocks the light to my living room but if they do I do recognise that my property rights only extend up to the front hedge.
As for having seen "more than five car crashes on the corner of the street" (how many more, one, five, ten?), what a bit of luck that there is now a solid obstacle that will force people to slow down and take more care at the junction, I should imagine most of the indeterminate number of crashes you have seen were caused by people cutting the corner without due care and hitting other people doing the same, they can't do that anymore.
Given their sudden concern for health and safety on that spot in particular, I wonder what they would say if the cycle hanger was moved elsewhere and the council prevented parking on that corner too. Presumably they'd still be upset!
Well, thank you for your input, Veloris. I'm sure Portsmouth City Council takes road safety very seriuously - in which case there should be double yellow lines for 10 metres from the junction in all directions, and then remove a further car parking space to site the bike hangar.
Totally agree - no parking within 10m of a junction anywhere makes sense to me.
And if demand is outstripping supply, then supply the market and add some ebike charging points as well, as they do for EMVs?
No need for yellow lines, stopping or parking within 10m of a junction is already prohibited in the Highway Code.
Phew! Now we just need to get some mention there of not "driving on the footway/cycle path" and/or leaving your vehicle there", "not driving above the speed limit", and "not running over people then driving off and saying you don't remember when the police turn up" - and the system's fixed!
Another instance of "what is not explicitly marked as prohibited in every place is fine" in the minds of many apparently. Pretty common here. Roll on a complete reversal of thinking on parking eg. only allowed where specifically marked.
Yellow lines would definitely help, though - I'm not sure that many motorists can recall that particular bit of the HC…
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