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Our surveys over the last year show us in 1st place among city centre businesses for the word ‘fob’ appearing in customer conversations. We’ve had enough of the word, and luckily East Midlands Railways are now dealing with enquiries about the outdated, unsafe and insecure model of cycle parking at their customer service desk at Sheffield station. But do come in and talk to us about bikes instead, we’d be delighted.
So, why are fobs so out of date when it comes to any kind of public bicycle parking? After many years of talking to the police and large companies and local governments about what works, what’s safe, and what’s secure for contemporary cyclists, we have a pretty good idea of what needs consigning to the past.
Old fob, old bike, old technology
The modern cycling world includes a fast growing number of e-bikes for families, businesses and individuals worth several thousand pounds, all targeted by thieves, and all very useful for a hilly city. Once the market and the government get to grips with the popularity of e-bikes, they’ll also become much more affordable, and before very long, e-bikes will be the norm, and motorless bikes will be the exotic outliers.
Today’s world also includes a wider variety of people cycling, with many more families and people with disabilities making journeys on expensive cycles. Not catering for these people is foolish, and frankly, discriminatory.
E-trike on Ecclesall Road
So, what is a fob? It’s very much like the medieval technology of a metal key. It allows the person with that fob / key in their hand to access something, like a large parking space with dozens of e-bikes costing several thousands pounds. Like a metal key, a fob can be handed to someone else, or lost at the pub. And we’ve seen online noticeboards where fobs are freely exchanged and handed to someone else, so no-one knows who’s using it.
So a cycle hub accessed by a key, or a fob, will have unknown people entering at any time. Such a cycle hub is nether secure nor safe, for any of those users mentioned above. One of the important arguments against low security cycle parking is that people feel nervous about parking there, not just for their bike, but for their own personal safety too.
A modern, forward-looking high security cycle parking hub will have controlled access, so the hub manager and other users know that people using it are registered to do so. We do this via a phone app connected to your phone (and your phone only) and paid for via a bank mandate, and with working CCTV and secure doors. If you use our hubs, anyone else in there will be known to the system, to us, and can be monitored on CCTV.
So think about those 4,000 + fobs still circulating for the nine year old Sheffield station cycle hub, bought for £10 to use for evermore, or handed on to someone else when you move away. That £10 for life barely covers the cost of the fob and its first registration, it certainly doesn’t pay for hub upkeep, CCTV monitoring, removing abandoned bikes or fixing broken ‘security’ doors.
Old CycleBoost bike left, possibly abandoned, in the station hub
The last time the door at the station broke down, we asked and asked for it to be repaired by EMR, but while we and Sheffield waited, bikes were stolen, and unregistered people used the hub for all kinds of things. We reckon around 50 bikes have been stolen from the Sheffield station hub during periods when the doors have not been working properly.
Just last week, the door at our new Meadowhall Hub was vandalised, and because we manage the place, we sorted out the locking and security problem within a couple of days. No miscreants got in, and no bikes were stolen.
We’ve been asking EMR to let us take over full management of the station hub for many years, a solution many of their staff are keen to see as soon as possible. But the decision has not yet been made.
If you’d like a high security cycle parking facility at Sheffield station, where you and your bike are secure and you feel safe, you might like to let the current managers know your thoughts.