Cycle Lifts – Meeting The Future Demand

Recent changes to planning policy in many major cities, allied to a growing awareness of the need to address our sedentary lifestyles, is driving the need to design buildings to accommodate more and more bicycle spaces. In large commercial developments in London, this can lead to a need for more than 1000 bicycle spaces, which often are located at basement levels. From a circulation perspective this creates a need to move people and their bicycles between street level and the bicycle storage facility. Sometimes this is achieved with a ramp, or adapted stairs, but often lifts are required. There is currently limited guidance on design benchmarks for lifts whose primary purpose is the movement of bicycles and their riders. What are acceptable waiting times? What is an acceptable queue length? How much space does a bicycle and accompanying rider occupy? How large does a lift need to be to accommodate two cycles and riders, or three cycles and riders. This paper explores the current guidance and proposes additional benchmarks for consideration when designing cycle lifts.