The Debate: Should London offices reduce bike parking?
Provisions for office cycle parking could be reduced under new London plans. But is throwing out bike racks too hasty? We look at both sides of the argument in this week’s Debate
YES: Three quarters of office bike parking is unused
It is shocking that vast office basements, built specifically to store workers’ bikes, are sitting largely unused. Our research found that 76 per cent of cycle parking spaces in central London offices are empty, even at peak times, rising to nearly 90 per cent in some buildings.
London’s offices are recognised as some of the world’s most sustainable and innovative. Yet constructing oversized basements, among the most carbon-intensive and costly parts of office development, to hold mostly empty cycle racks is an own goal. With development costs soaring, this also constrains London’s ability to deliver the office space needed for jobs and growth.
If the cycle storage space rules do not change, in the City alone, under its recently approved plans to provide at least 1.2m square metres of office space by 2040, developers will need to build the equivalent of an entire 70 St Mary Axe, known as the ‘Can of Ham’, just to cater for empty bike racks in basements.
This is not an argument against cycling, quite the contrary. Cycling is a great way to travel to work. But a well-intentioned policy, introduced to promote sustainable travel before the rise of dockless bikes, is increasingly out of step with how people travel today. Planning rules currently assume that 19 per cent of office workers will commute on their own bike; the actual figure is just 6.5 per cent, as a quick count of your cycling colleagues will confirm.
The proposed changes in the Draft London Plan simply align requirements with modern commuting habits, including rising use of London’s exceptional public transport.
Charles Begley is chief executive at London Property Alliance
NO: Scrapping cycle parking will be primarily celebrated by thieves
At its striking new HQ in King’s Cross, Google is providing some 600 cycle parking spaces, for roughly 10 per cent of staff, because that’s what it thinks it needs. With Kim Kardashian and Lewis Hamilton seen pedalling around London the humble bike is no longer seen as a shameful mark of poverty but as evidence of aspiration to health, wealth and the freedom of cycling. The morning phalanx of cycle commuters into the City of London and Canary Wharf fills cycle lanes to the brim. Cycle trips grew by 12 per cent in 2025 to 1.5m per day, five times what they were 25 years ago. Hire bikes, which, don’t forget, require parking spaces too, are enjoying a boom and some customers go on to buy their own – consultancy McKinsey finds 87 per cent of shared micromobility users also use private micromobility.
The very existence of cycle parking in office developments is a recent phenomenon which, along with new cycle lanes, has boosted cycle use. Densely occupied premises shared by start-ups and charities, like LCC, run out of bike racks even if spaces for 10 per cent of staff are provided. Dysfunctional or inaccessible racks installed by developers can undermine use.
Scrapping or reducing cycle parking provision today, in buildings that are expected to last 60 years, will be celebrated by thieves who already steal some 40,000 bikes in London each year. And eliminating secure storage will surely stymie the growth in cycling which is helping to improve people’s health, reduce pollution and cut congestion. If firms have spare cycle spaces then lease them to neighbours in Victorian buildings which often have none at all.
Tom Bogdanowicz is a senior policy officer at London Cycling Campaign
THE VERDICT
Riding a bike: so simple and yet so political. This week, discussion has strayed from well-worn anti-lycra complaints to the more pedestrian matter of bike storage following the revelation of the London Property Alliance (represented to the left) that three quarters of central London office cycle parking is going unused. Quel scandale! What to do?
The issue stems from the 2021 London plan, which required new office buildings to provide one bike space for every 75 square metres. The Mayor is proposing this is reshaped, and reduced, to align with staff headcount. While Mr Bogdanowicz is right to defend the virtues of cycling, and correctly describes the London biking boom of recent years, he fails to acknowledge that the blazing colour of this revolution has not been the shiny red of commuter-owned bicycles bought charmingly for birthdays, but rather of a luminous, sometimes enraging, Lime green. The truth is, cycling is booming because it has become more convenient not thanks to office basements, but to the innovations of those firms such as Lime that have rendered those basements needless. The verdict: use it or lose it.