The City Property Association (CPA) has called into question current rules in the London Plan regarding the provision of bike storage spaces.
As it stands, the CPA has calculated that under the current London Plan, the City of London's target to deliver 1.2 million m2 of new office space by 2040 would require around 25,000 additional cycle parking spaces. That would take up around 42,500 m2, with each space producing 1.29 tonnes of carbon, meaning an overall release of 21,500 tonnes of carbon by the 2040 target year.
The reason this is an issue, according to the CPA, is that according to their research, only 14% of those spaces would be used. It said the London Plan requirements have become “increasingly misaligned with current and future forecast cycle use”, especially given 64% of City of London employees live more than 10km away so will probably use public transport instead of bikes.
CPA chair and Landsec Head of Development Management Ross Sayers said “Providing cycle facilities at the scale required by the London Plan comes with a huge carbon and capital cost, with tall buildings disproportionately impacted. We urgently need more flexible policies better suited to actual cycle use, particularly as virtually all excess cycle capacity would require the construction of additional basement space, the most expensive, high risk and carbon-intensive part of development.
“The costs are so high that the financial and environmental impact of unrequired space risks undermining the viability of new schemes.”
Planning always has to be a balance, and part of sustainable development is planning to meet the needs of future generations. It could be the case that bike use in the future is much higher in London and polluting vehicles are fewer in number, so the spaces therefore wouldn't be a waste of time. However, it is difficult to know what the future holds, and such a change is potentially only possible with positive policy shifts that place more emphasis on bike use and make it more difficult for polluting vehicles, such as prioritising bike lanes over roads.
