As many of us are choosing to travel via bike each day, there is an increase in demand for places to safely park bicycles. Business owners now have an opportunity to make staff and guests happy and cater for all of their needs when installing bike shelters.

As petrol prices rise, and the nation becomes more health conscious than ever, bikes are fast becoming a popular way to travel. Travelling by bicycle not help improve your fitness, great for the environment and of curse your wallet, but it means you can quickly travel to and from wherever you need to quickly, efficiently and not have to worry about expensive parking fees.

With this in mind, many workplaces, schools and local businesses are catering for those who travel this way, and installing bike shelters for your guests convenience. Bike shelters are a one-time cost, thus if you are a business owner are budget friendly. It is well known that a good business thrives when both its customers and staff members are well taken care of and happy, therefore why not go that extra mile and purchase a bike shelter for your premises.

Modern bike shelters are perfect for ensuring that cycles are kept safe and secure, and are also manufactured in a way that they look visually attractive so will not make the exterior area of your business look bad. With such a high demand for bike shelters, there is now a huge range available for you to choose from, many of which come with very affordable price tags making them difficult to resist!

Along with being affordable, bike shelters are now much more accessible than they used to be. Thanks to modern technology you are now able to buy bike shelters online, which is quick, safe and easy to do.  Prior to buying a cycle shelter for your business, you should take the time to consider which shelter is best for not only the needs of your staff members and customers, but also for the space available at your premises.

Making sure you check the exact location where you intend to place your bike shelter is one of the first things you should do, as you do not want to buy a shelter that is too big for the space and looks out of place or causes obstruction. The great thing is you can buy bike shelters in a vast array of sizes, so once you have measured the space you want to use, you can easily browse suitable bike shelters available, that will fit perfectly. If you have a unique space, or cannot find a pre-made shelter that is the perfect size, then no problem. Many reputable manufacturers of bike shelters are able to custom make a bespoke shelter for you.

Bike shelters are affordable and practical. Now you are able to safely park your bike in a shelter which protects it from bad weather conditions and potential damage. Businesses can easily find a bike shelter for their premises due to shelters being readily available to order online.

In the past ten years cycling has gone from being a pastime to a viable mode of transport. In the nineties if you cycled to work you would have got a patronising pat on the head and some condescending clichés about how it is a “great thing you are doing”. Nowadays we get funding from the government and our employers in order to buy a top of the range bike so that we can cycle to work. 

It is great how the mindset has changed in such a short period of time and I congratulate the last government on achieving that. However our employers and the public transport authorities have to catch up with the demand for Cycle Shelters. There simply aren’t enough Bike Sheds in the public realm.

Even in schools the problem is endemic – and they get government funding of over £5,000 to erect cycle shelters. This really is a problem that we have to address. It is superb that we have so many cyclists in the country – we are saving fuel and the environment, but we need the infrastructure. The more we invest in the infrastructure the more cyclists we will get – and that means that we will be going even further in helping the environment and lowering the risks to pedestrians and indeed other cyclists.

Think about how many train stations you visit that have very good car parking facilities – can you remember seeing any bike shelters? I can think of only a handful of train stations with such facilities. I must say though when we see new Park ‘n’ Ride terminals being built they often have excellent cycle shelters – but we need to reinvest in older, more used, facilities.

Long gone are the days when metal bars sticking out of the ground or even railings, will do as places for people to lock up their bikes. With people frequently spending around a thousand pounds on a bike, they will not chain it to a railing. We need to invest in suitable cycle shelters in our towns and cities. It will clear our roads, lower our emissions and decrease bicycle theft.

Schools, Local Authorities, and Government must recognise the importance of cycling infrastructure – in particular cycle shelters. It is about time that we invested in sustainable transport and cycling is about a sustainable as you can get.

If you are talking about sustainable transport you have to talk about bicycles – the most sustainable form of transport we have. I’m all for investing millions of tax-payers money into carbonless fuel and alternative energy forces, but we have a mode of transport, already proven, that is 100% sustainable and it is in dire need of government investment: Cycling.

Think about how we travel – most of us, whether we are train users, drivers or bus users, use major arterial routes. But in order to get to these services we drive – there are millions of cars across the UK that spend all day parked in a train or bus station while the owner uses these services to commute to work. This is great and these bus and train services are essential in lowering our carbon emissions, but imagine if more people cycled to these transport terminals.

The car parks for major bus and rail stations are huge, but the bike shelters are practically non-existent. If we invested in decent, secure cycle shelters far more commuters would use them. This is a chicken-egg scenario; the cycle shelters must be built and be visible for people to consider cycling to work, or to the transport terminals that they use for work.

When you travel abroad – Spain, Holland, France, and Italy (I could go on…) they all have superb cycling infrastructure; from cycle paths to cycle shelters – and people use them. We have changed our attitude to cycling in this country, more and more of us are cycling and millions of pounds are being spent on high spec bicycles. But if you have bought a bicycle worth a thousand pounds you do not want to tie it to the railings while you’re at work.

We need to get our local governments and local authorities to invest in more cycling infrastructure in our schools, work places and our public transport services. The more cycle shelters that are built, the more they will be used. This will have a major knock on effect to lower carbon emissions, healthier lifestyles, less road fatalities; it is an investment for the future.

The more we invest in cycling infrastructure the better off our society will be: less obesity, less road fatalities, less carbon emissions, less traffic. It is a win-win situation.