Designing Effective Bike Parking Hubs

What are Bike Hubs?

Bike parking hubs help promote sustainable and active travel, and will often combine various bike parking types and integral cycling features, such as repair and maintenance services, into one dedicated facility, as well as enabling opportunities to integrate educational materials for users like nearby route information posters and advice on secure locking.

Designing Effective Bike Parking Hubs

Designing an effective and purposeful facility requires an assessment of certain core considerations, covering safety and security, layout and space planning, visual elements, and practical features.

Safety and Security

Location – Bike Hubs should be installed in a prominent location with passive oversight enabled, ideally as close to the main cyclist destination as possible. Bike parking standards advise this as within 15 metres of a single destination for short-term bike parking, 25 metres if serving multiple destinations, and 50 metres for facilities offering long-term storage.
Locking Systems – Bike hubs will accommodate multiple-user access, so implementing a dedicated locking system will help to establish access control to authorised individuals only and offer reassurance. Options for this include app-based, electronic fob, mechanical keypad and key operated systems.
Cladding – Options for external wall panelling will offer various levels of security and whether the bike hub will have an open or enclosed design. These include materials such as glass, coloured steel, and timber. Coated security mesh is one option that is highly-effective for high-security settings and offers line of sight throughout the hub.
Lighting – A bike hub facility should be well-lit to enable access during non-daylight hours. Integrating this as a priority will help to reassure users that their bikes are safe by deterring bike theft opportunities through active visibility, with the addition of CCTV beneficial if the bike hub has an enclosed design.

Layout and Space Planning

Capacity – With bike hubs offering a range of options to accommodate storage and capacity requirements, effective space planning is key to optimising cost per bike stored within the designated setting. Looking to provide a higher capacity than is initially required will help to accommodate future cycling uptake.
Bike Parking – The level of security required will help to determine what kind of bike parking the hub will offer, such as how many locking points are required. Bike hubs accommodate single-row layouts with stand, semi-vertical or two-tier rack types.

Visual Elements

Finishes – Bike hubs offer a variety of options for ensuring a coordinated design that compares or contrasts with the setting. Finishes will typically be protective layers and coatings that help to provide protection from the elements when the bike hub is installed in an external environment.
Signage: Implementing dedicated signage at access paths and routes in the environment helps to direct cyclists, residents and building users to the location of the bike hub. A simple means to encourage use.
Information – information as a part of the facility: provide leaflets, cycle routes and maps for the cyclist to use. Make the hub an information hub!

Practical Features

Equipment Lockers: Providing secure lockers for bags, helmets and other accessories is highly beneficial for users and helps to encourage use. These additions can also be designed to take up limited floor space and can be fitted to walls to maximise the available footprint.
Bike Repair Station – Another simple yet highly useful facility that benefits cyclists by incorporating pumps and bike tools to ensure bikes are in top condition at the beginning of their journey, through to end-users arriving back to store their bikes overnight or throughout the day.

Designing Bike Hubs With urbanspec

Secure bike hubs from urbanspec combine volume manufacture with custom build capability. Accommodated within each build layout are extensive options for capacity, cladding and frame finishes, access control, and roof type specifications. Custom dimensions and configurations from the same proven design platform utilise an integrated design and engineering methodology, making site-wide design coordination and single-source procurement a realistic target.

Central to urbanspec product design, bike hubs can be easily configured to be Secure By Design compliant or incorporated into planning applications to achieve BREEAM performance requirements, enabling bike storage to be considered from the earliest stages of project development

A substantial resource and knowledge base enables urbanspec to simplify specifications, utilising CAD models, NBS specifications and datasheets available for download. Supporting CPD programmes provide clarity on the optimal approach to aspects such as security considerations and effective space planning.