MORE GOOD NEWS ... STILL FROM UK

September 28, 2009
Thousands more parking places created at stations – but only for cyclists
from The Times Online, Ben Webster, Environment Editor

The daily misery of hunting for a space in the railway station car park and being charged up to £20 for the privilege will soon be over for thousands of commuters — if they switch from petrol to pedal power.

The Government will announce today that it is creating 10,000 additional secure cycle spaces at stations as part of a commitment to “put cycling at the heart of transport policy”. Hundreds of stations will get cycle stands monitored by CCTV cameras or with cages accessible by swipe cards. Ministers have not yet ruled out reallocating spaces from cars to bikes.
In addition, ten main stations, Waterloo, Victoria and St Pancras in London, as well as Leeds, Sheffield, York, Hull, Grimsby, Scunthorpe and Liverpool Lime Street, will gain “cycle hubs” offering cheap repairs, cycle hire and supervised parking.

The £14 million of funding for cycle facilities being announced today comes after the commitment last year to spend £100 million to increase cycling in a dozen towns and cities. The Department for Transport has set a target of getting an additional 2.5 million people cycling regularly. It also aims to offer basic cycle training under the Bikeability scheme to half a million ten-year-olds across England by 2012.
[...]
Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, will say today that: “For too long we have hesitated to promote cycling — the greenest form of travel — as a mainstream form of transport. Yet more than half of all journeys — including journeys to work, school and college — are of five miles or less. If we made it easier and safer, more people would cycle. Just talk to the people already on their bikes. They sail past the traffic, they enjoy the exercise, they get a sense of freedom. And the cost in petrol? Nothing.”

Lord Adonis decided to invest in station cycle parking after visiting the railway station in the small Dutch city of Leiden. It has supervised parking for 6,000 bicycles [...]
The standard amount of funding for cycling initiatives in English local authorities is about £1 per citizen, per year. In contrast, Dutch cities such as Amsterdam are spending between £10 and £20 per year. [...]

source : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6851682.ece