If you were given a pot of money to improve facilities at work to encourage cycle commuting, what would you spend it on?

Not an entirely hypothetical question, I’m working on this just now.

On my list so far:
– Secure cycle parking with power for charging e-bikes
– Shower and changing facilities
– Drying cabinets for wet gear (any recommendations?)
– Tool station / pump / spare locks
– Pool bikes for use by those who have to drive n but could use bikes during day / lunch time etc

This will go alongside policy stuff like continued C2W scheme, incentives, local discounts etc.

So crack on, what would be in your ideal bike friendly workplace?

I’d like the cycle parking not to be next to a smoking area, it really irritates me that.

I’m easily pleased – just the first three of those points is enough for me.

Worth emphasising things like cycle parking and shower/changing facilities need to be convenient, not stuck at the far end of the building. Office I was previously in had an open cycle shelter (aka smoking shelter) at end of building. Showers/changing involved going up to office on first floor, getting your towel/office clothing (as no storage in changing area), back down to ground floor, out the front door, walk outside for a minute to another door into the changing area, wait 5+ mins on shower pulling hot water through, then repeat in reverse. I ended up cycling in easy to avod the need to shower and changing in the office toilet.

I’d like the cycle parking not to be next to a smoking area, it really irritates me that.

Most cycle racks are an afterthought, much like smoking sheds so they end up being put in whatever space they have left.

– Secure cycle parking with power for charging e-bikes
– Shower and changing facilities
– Drying cabinets for wet gear (any recommendations?)

These are the biggest things, actually having some thought put into this rather than it being a “well I suppose we should provide a single shower for 800 staff so some can cycle in” 😡

depending on the site, a way of getting to the bike park area thats not super inconvinient/having to walk un-necessarily, etc.

put the secure bike parking nearer the front door than all non-disabled parking spaces so everyone has to walk past them

locker to keep stuff on-site between rides.

put the secure bike parking nearer the front door than all non-disabled parking spaces so everyone has to walk past them

We are hopefully taking out four parking spaces immediately out the front of the office and replacing these with secure bike sheds. The only way you will get closer to reception is if you are a blue badge holder or if you are parking one of the EV pool cars.

Top three will do.

Decent shower and changing plus drying cabinet – but would need to be close together. Ours is on the opposite side of the building for which you’ve got to go and get a key from reception and return it – no good when you are in earlier than the receptionist. We’ve nowhere to put damp clothes, other than hang around the office, which isn’t really acceptable – I pop my stuff on an oil filled electric radiator !

Top 3 is pretty much what I have at work. Bike lock up could be better but it’s pretty good. It currently in an enclosed car par area that’s closed off by big roller shutter doors. Quite secure but the actual bits we lock our bikes to are crap.

Drying cabinets are great. I don’t really bother with the showers though as I find it a right faff, so just shower at home before I leave.

The third one is tricky – my office facilities are good (secure easy basement entry, plenty of racks, locker room, good showers) but drying kit is always an issue.

The locker room is small, has one small radiator and no ventilation, so on wet days nothing really dries (apart from the guy who chucks everyone else’s kit on the floor so his socks can sit atop the radiator) and the room ends up stinking.

The basement car park – where the bike racks are, same level as showers/locker room – also houses the big exit fans for the air conditioning, so there’s a near constant circulation of warm air. All it needs is a couple of clothes racks with hangers to be installed close to these and the problem would be solved I reckon. I keep asking but it hasn’t happened yet!

dont pollute your
“Secure cycle parking”
with
“power for charging e-bikes”
else you will have to offer the same to the E scooters, motorbikes and cars (incl hybrids)

biggest issue really seems to be “where to put wet riding gear”, when ive been lucky enough to have a locker, the last thing i wanted to do with sopping wet kit is lock it away for the day.
As above, if the secure cycle parking can be near the changing, showering, drying facilities thats great.

dont forget to factor in the costs, (manpower and money) for the ongoing maintenence of stuff like tools/pumps/showers/bike locks, also removal of locks and BSOs

from experience….. good luck with “pool bikes”

Pool bikes are a nightmare, I’m not looking forward to that one. Looking at a lease arrangement with a local hire place so they take care of everything.

Any recommendations for drying cabinets?

For those of you that have a room and are fighting for drying space, I recommend dehumidifier, they are brilliant.

Removal of locks is a big issue on site. As well as a secure cycle parking area within the car park (except the doors break on a regular basis – and don’t lock) is we’ve also bike lockers outside. These are all supposed to use a ‘keyed alike’ padlock, so you turn up, open locker, put bike in, use your lock to secure the door. Except 90% have had someone’s lock on then and can’t be used. I know only one or two lockers are used regular, out of about 30. Only 3-4 are still available for use.

Decent extraction in the shower, and somewhere to sit where your feet aren’t going to get wet putting your socks and shoes on. Getting all hot and soggy after a shower defeats the point.

Lockers and drying space adjacent.

Enough showers that you don’t have to queue, especially if everyone turns up at 8.50.

Bike tools in the bike shed, not in the cellar in a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on saying beware of the leopard. Try turvec.

Separate shower / changing, in other words, not big locking shower cubicals with enough space for shower AND changing for only 1 person. A few showers cubicals inside a larger shared changing room is better. All it takes is a couple of people taking an inexplicably long time to get changed while locking out an idle shower and your late.

And Mrs Llama’s hate – don’t assume you know what the women want

A curtain on the showers. It took a year of pestering to get one of these installed.

There was another thread the other day that had a link to a drying cabinet. I’ll see if I can find it….

We made our own drying room at work with an oil filled rad and dehumidifier on timers,it was a game changer for winter commuting.

2Tyred’s place sounds just like our office in Glasgow….

Loads of storage for bike – hundreds of them – and about a dozen lockers. Radiator jammed full of drying kit. I normally just dry my kit on a chair near my desk…

Secure site, no need for locks, showers, changing room etc – just a faff with drying kit

Here you go.

Tricks for drying cycling gear at work

http://www.pekodryingcabinets.co.uk/products/peko-ed-1900r-drying-cabinet-new-model/

We have all of them and an onsite bike shop with free servicing. Quality showers and somewhere to store clothing are the most important. Clothes driers are a nice to have but can’t accommodate volume when it gets wet and cycling popular. Access to a pump would be second on my list. I work on a secure site, so haven’t locked a bike in years.

And the biggest cycle to work driver would be a free coffee when you arrive.

Guy that I used to work with walked to work across a field in sandals and socks. He had refused to give up his giant CRT monitor and dried his socks on the top.

Actually secure parking
Shower
Lockers near to said showers. The locker is for the workwear, so you don’t have to clip clop your way to your desk to pick up your clothes etc.

Some sort of policy that you don’t have to take your laptop home only to bring it straight in again the next day.

I have to walk about 100yds to the bike storage, which does not sound like much, but with a ruptured achilles is quite a trek.

I think if I had more serous mobility issues I might still want to cycle, but find that walk a massive pain.

(It sounds like your cycling is as close as it can get, so double-thumbs up from me on that).

Also a coffee machine near the showers that are near the lockers that’s next to the drying room. Getting off the bike and having an espresso right there is nice

Any recommendations for drying cabinets?

Our lockers have plinth heaters and a grill top and bottom to allow the warm air to circulate. Works well for damp clothes, but not very wet. For that there’s a load of towel radiators.

Assigned, secure lockers.

I’ve worked in a couple of locations which have provided some lockers but don’t allow users to store stuff over night (in fairness, the lockers where originally intended for the on-site gym users).

I’ve recently started a new job at a building that has pretty good facilities. Not our building, we just rent space there. My swipe card to access the office gets me into the underground car park and separate bike room inside the car park. Tool station and floor pump in the bike room. Lift close to the bike room up to the second floor where the shower / change rooms are. Plenty of showers and lockers with soap and towels provided free of charge. Drying cupboard next to shower rooms.

We have;

Secure underground bike store
Specific Brompton storage for those of a folding persuasion
Ebike charging
A drying room
Showers
Some day use lockers
Advice from Sustrans to help with route planning

All interconnected. They are attached to the Guide Dog shitting area as well.

What we don’t have:
Additional chargers/headsets for our work laptops
Anywhere to store clothes, toiletries etc

Hence we have to carry a shitload of stuff everyday as we try and do hybrid working.

Feel pretty lucky where I work. The whole business park provides central facilities (albeit dotted around the park) for all its tenant companies. I have secure bike parking, a dedicated locker that’s connected to the HVAC system, brilliant showers and changing facilities, towels, shower gel etc. provided, tools, pump and spares if needed and best of all a really good drying room that’s kept at about 30deg in winter. Makes the commute that much easier all year round.

– Tool station / pump / spare locks
– Pool bikes for use by those who have to drive n but could use bikes during day / lunch time etc

From experience, these will break, get “borrowed”, be of truly terrible quality and no-one will be remotely interested in maintaining any sort of order with them.

Avoid at all costs.

The basics are:
Secure bike storage. don’t need to be pretty, but does need to be indoors and ideally covered by CCTV.
Changing rooms. Note, not shower rooms. Think leisure centre changing rooms on a smaller scale, so 4 or 5 showers and a large room where people get changed.
Lockers. Secure and safe, but they need to be emptied once per week or there’ll be hogged/forgotten.
Somewhere to dry stuff. The best I’ve seen was a room that was heated by the hot water supply in the building. It was warm and smelly but dried stuff a treat. Again, it was emptied once per week to stop people using it as a storage room.

Optional:
EBike chargers. I’m not convinced on this, very few people are doing a commute long enough that they need a charge before the ride home.

We have
No secure bike storage, it’s not even dry.
No showers
No nothing

We have a secure bike garage, swipe card access (both entry and exit) and two cameras per door so they can see if anyone leaves with someone else’s bike (can tie the card swipes to faces and bikes). When that’s full there’s space for loads more bikes in about a dozen more locations, but not so secure. Probably space to park well over 1000 bikes (about 14000 people on site i think)
Almost every building has proper shower facilities (bigger changing rooms than most sports facilities in the main building!) and more lockers than you can shake a grubby stick at (100s of them). Some are allocated, others are first come first served (no over weekend storage in any of them though, officially, have to be emptied on friday, but they only check about once a quarter, and even if you DO leave your stuff, they put a label on the door “Empty this locker by XX.XX.XX or it will be emptied”. Mainly so they can clean the locker and the vents (about 20% of the lockers are connected to a drying/ventilation system that runs for a couple of hours in the morning, not the ones in my building unfortunately).
A couple of the newly refurbished buildings have small rooms where you can charge, once you’ve had your battery and charger checked. (We’re 10 miles out of the city centre at the top of a big hill. Cheapie E-Bikes ridden by commuters from the other side of the city, on full support need a charge. There are a lot of people doing this.)

Last place i worked (UK) the bike shed was dual purpose with the smokers shelter, until they built a smokers shelter, then they stopped “maintaining” the bike shed, until it fell down. Once found my saddle had been used by some disgusting bucket of tar and cancer as somewhere to stub their death stick out.
About half a dozen showers for the whole site (8000 people), no where to dry kit except if you had a quiet corner of the office and a spare chair to drape stuff over. Only about space for 20 bikes, total. Also about a 10 minute walk from the shed to the two main office buildings. At least the shed was on site. Still didn’t stop the occasional “man with van” picking up some extra stuff as he was leaving.

Get decent bike racks though, ones that don’t allow your bike to flop around everywhere and buckle/gouge wheels, or scrape frames.

The only way you will get closer to reception is if you are a blue badge holder or if you are parking one of the EV pool cars

You may want to reconsider this, having EV charging points adjacent to exit doors isn’t a good thing.

What really boils my wee is the absolute lack of available facilities for kids to get changed at school. Changing rooms out of bounds unless for PE etc. Nowhere to store wet gear if it rains on way in. And this is in a ultra-modern, purpose built school building, not a 1950s remodelled job

i would give anything for my work to have the top 3.

we have a bike shelter. Which can hold 3 bikes at a push.

its all a bit disappointing really.

Your plan sounds mint and i am jealous of your cycling work colleagues!

Ours is definitely the best “bang for your buck”.

Top of the list, security pass accessed cage in the underground car park so security can see anyone coming in on CCTV long befor they even get to it. This is the only bit that the company directly provided, everything else has been from club funds (the company makes a contribution to those too).

We’ve taken over an old suite of meeting rooms to make men’s and women’s changing rooms with wardrobes built into old cupboards from back when everything was on paper. Nextdoor there are men’s and women’s drying rooms, just rooms full of wardrobe rails with a dehumidifier, couple of oil filled radiators and and some boot dryers. Works really well.

Showers are either in the on site gym or there’s more in the dissabled loos.

Pool bikes are whatever was left in the racks for a year without moving.

Tools, there’s a cheap set in the bike cage allong with some cheap chain oil, selection of tubes, a pump etc.

The company is a a bit stingy so all that’s been done on a shoestring. I think the only big costs were the tools and spares (about £100), some plywood to shield the changing rooms so the doors could be open for ventilation, and a load of pipe lagging to cover the Sheffield stands so bikes didn’t get scratched (the company might be stingy, doesn’t stop people commuting on Cervelos with 12s Di2!).

Racks that are useable for bikes with mudguards!

We’ve got decent, secure* bike racks at work, they made it possible to give as many people as possible a space, but they’re the hang by the front wheel type, which are shit for

– ebikes,
– less strong people,
– less strong people with ebikes,
– bigger tyres,
– disc rotors over 160mm,
– anything with full guards fitted.

*underground garage with swipe access opening a roller shutter door, swipe access again to a metal cage, CCTV. All been defeated by ballsy tailgaters, though. :-/

– Pool bikes for use by those who have to drive n but could use bikes during day / lunch time etc

No. don’t do this, it’s an absolute nightmare.

Yeah, our place got a deal with one of the boris bike type organisations over here.

They pretty much never got used. Then all got scrapped.

We do have cargo/butchers bikes (with very low gearing) for moving around the factory and workshop areas.