Locals have taken to Twitter to campaign for better bike storage in the borough as the amount of people on the Islington waiting list for a secure bike hangar reaches 6,963.
Cyclists are using #ThisIsAwkward to share photos of their bikes squeezed into small or awkward places in their homes. The trend has exposed how commuters are storing their bikes in bedrooms, bathtubs and in tight hallways, because of a lack of secure storage options.
Clean Cities, an environmental group, started the Twitter campaign on 8 March with the tweet: “#Londoners! Sick of doing the ‘cycle salsa’ to pass bikes in your home? Join the #ThisIsAwkward campaign by posting a pic of where you’re forced to keep your wheels. We’re calling for bike storage across the city!”
Islington Council currently provides three types of bike storage: lamppost mounted storage, Sheffield stands, and lockable hangars available for rent. The hangars store up to six bicycles at once, but a space for one bike costs £107.25 per year, in addition to a £25.75 key deposit.
Although there are currently 3,287 bike spaces in the borough and over 1,650 Sheffield stands on public highways, nearly 7,000 cyclists are waiting for a secure bike hangar. Islington, where 75% of residents live in flats, has the third longest waiting list behind Southwark and Camden. The statistics, obtained by Clean Cities through Freedom of Information requests, also revealed that the total number of cyclists waiting for bike hangars across all London boroughs exceeds 60,000.
Nicholas Till, a university professor living on Rheidol Terrace, expressed his frustration about the borough’s bike hangars in a tweet that went viral. He wrote: “A cycle storage unit has appeared in my street. Thank you Islington Council. But why does it cost £107 to store a bike for a year, and only £25 pa for a resident’s car parking permit? Wrong priorities ?”.
Although £25 is the starting price for a parking permit for an electric car, most Islington permits cost significantly more depending on how environmentally friendly, or old your model is. Nonetheless Till’s tweet resonated with Islington locals equally frustrated by their own bike storage situations.
He said: “The tweet got a surprising amount of response. At the same time I tweeted what I thought was a much more important comment that only got about three reactions I think, but this one just kept picking up.”
“I’m a completely regular, urban, commuting cyclist,” said Till, “I keep [my bike] in my front hall and I have to lug it up my front stairs which is not ideal, so that was why I was interested.”
Till also works in Amsterdam, where bike storage is abundant in comparison and the city is very bike-friendly.
Beneath the original tweet, Till added: “The storage unit takes up the same amount of space as one car. You can store six bikes in the unit. So at the very least car should pay £107 and bikes £107 divided by 6 = £17.80.”
“The manufacturers of the hangar got in touch to say, ‘Actually it takes up half a car parking space so therefore you should calculate it as even more.’”
