SOS: Cycle Parking Crisis

SOS: Save Our Spaces! Please go to https://www.visionkingslynn.co.uk/projects/rail-to-river/ before the end of Sunday 13 February 2022 and ask for the Purfleet Cycle Parking to either stay where it is or be moved closer to the shops, not further away. Come along to our regular second-Thursday meeting tonight (10th) at 7.45pm at the Rathskeller, Hanse House, South Quay, if you have questions.

The Purfleet Cycle Parking is substandard (too close to the wall, some racks too small and too close together), rusting and generally unloved, but is still very very useful. Lots of people walking past means it is secure enough most of the day, although the poor CCTV coverage means it is imperfect overnight. It's parking for 48 cycles within seconds of the middle of High Street.

Now artist sketches show the cycle parking obliterated by wooden market huts as part of a rail-to-river route along the notoriously no-cycling-allowed New Conduit Street. There seems to be no suggestion of creating a decent rail-to-river cycle route, which we've been requesting for over 20 years now!

There is talk of a secure cycle hub, which is a good idea but no substitute for short-stay shopper parking, especially when it is further away and in a car park. The previous cycle hub in the St James Multi-storey hasn't been entirely successful and we don't know if lessons have been learned from it, or from the closed-down Chantry Place one in Norwich. Car parks are generally awful places to cycle in, with drivers making all sorts of unusual movements. So: we'd welcome a secure hub in addition to the shopper parking, not instead of it, and not in another flipping car park!

We need more decent cycle parking near the shops, in line with the Norfolk Parking Standards, accessible from safe space for cycling, in line with the National Planning Policy Framework. Please tell them!

Purfleet Cycle Parking

We have lost too much cycle parking from the town centre in the last 15 years:

  • 30 spaces have been removed from Tuesday Market Place without consultation: 40 were removed for the Mart one year and only 10 put back;
  • 16 spaces were removed from Baxter's Plain, 8 from Clough Lane and 8 from High Street to make space for the Art, Cities & Landscape project and haven't returned even where the art works have since left;
  • 20 covered spaces were lost from Baxter's Plain during one of the Vancouver Centre redevelopments — and we fear the 10 remaining uncovered spaces will be lost during the Athenaeum/Old Post Office redevelopment;
  • 20 covered spaces were replaced by 24 uncovered spaces further away from shops during the Transport Interchange redevelopment, then another maybe 12 covered spaces were removed because not enough space had been allowed to access them safely (without injuring yourself or another cyclist parking).
  • ...and that's just the ones I remember off the top of my head!

There are fewer than 150 cycle parking spaces in the shopping area, but over 2400 car parking spaces around it (including over 200 on the Tuesday Market Place where cycles only get 10), yet it is the cycle parking which gets targetted for removal again and again.

King's Lynn should be adding town centre cycle parking, in line with the Gear Change and Active Neighbourhoods policies.

The tiny and often overcrowded 10-space Tuesday Market Place parking, with space for 200 cars beyond. And it gets removed for a month every spring too!

Please let the Vision King's Lynn's website know that "relocating" the Purfleet cycle parking is a bad idea and we need more good cycle parking close to the shops, not less!

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