National Highways being asshats?

which would double Brompton’s manufacturing capacity to 200,000 bikes a year and create up to 4,000 jobs

The chances all 4000 staff being able to cycle there is zero. And using someone else's car park isn't a long term option - and just punting the problem onto someone else - who may withdraw agreement in future.

And anyone who's been to a designer outlet knows they're not just rammed at weekends, but every school and bank holiday too.

This isn't new behaviour for National Highways. See also infilling of old railway bridges which is in their remit.

Yeah, saw that in the local rag as it's near me. Absolute madness. There's tons of parking for the now mothballed international station, less than a mile away. Employees could drive to there and walk or, I don't know, use a Brompton for the last leg? Or they could operate a shuttle bus! The (only) good thing about Ashford is that the cycle lane provision & public transport is actually really good, it's the perfect place to build this kind of sustainable car-free business tbh.

Plus I want to buy a discounted bike from their factory shop 😂

I would deny it too. As said the idea that all those people will ride to work, while admirable, is also just not going to happen, and so you'd end up filling all the local streets with cars and creating havoc for your neighbours which is 101 bad planning.

Using/buying the disused car park with a shuttle bus would qualify as viable I reckon, a far more sensible idea.

Surely the fact they want to build in a floodplain is the real problem here. Why the hell are we still thinking that's an ok use for land that, by definition, should be allowed to flood?

and so you’d end up filling all the local streets with cars and creating havoc for your neighbours which is 101 bad planning.

The chances all 4000 staff being able to cycle there is zero.

Surely the fact they want to build in a floodplain is the real problem here.

they won’t though, as there isn’t any residential nearby, the site is totally hemmed in by motorways/dual carriageways and a railway!

Sounds like perfect bike commuting infrastructure! Nowt like bombing along a dual carriageway on a Brompton.

This seems no different to companies who do carbon offsetting and claim they are green. "Look at our wonderful car-free site". But don't look at the big car-park a mile away.

Something quite depressing in the fact that the notion of slightly inconveniencing some motorists is somehow deemed too radical.

I mean maybe it won't work but covering the world in parking spaces isn't brilliant either so, you know.

Sounds like perfect bike commuting infrastructure! Nowt like bombing along a dual carriageway on a Brompton.

This seems no different to companies who do carbon offsetting and claim they are green. “Look at our wonderful car-free site”. But don’t look at the big car-park a mile away.

maybe the location of it isn't ideal to encourage active travel/PT trips. Unsure ofthe links to local areas from the site but the active travel links outside London and particularly in inter urban areas are poor to non-existent. Locating such places closer to your workforce is usually good practice.

You could say let the market forces dictate and Brompton employees sort it out so that they only work there if they dont drive in, but when they can't get the staff, what then?

maybe the location of it isn’t ideal to encourage active travel/PT trips.

This isn’t new behaviour for National Highways. See also infilling of old railway bridges which is in their remit.

This.
Bunch of dinosaurs desperately trying to create and maintain car-dependent places, often by being actively hostile to anything that might threaten or even marginally seek to curb that private car domination.

I don't know about all the parking stuff, but this seems like a very expensive flashy elaborate looking factory for a folding bike? It's even got a cycle path on the roof!

I bet it won’t look anything like that in reality with ping pong tables in the sun  and people milling around with laptops. I bet there will be some director parking spaces

Surely as a company making an urban product and claiming its green they should be building on a brownfield site rather the virgin green field land

It works only on the assumption that every Brompton factory employee works there because they are a fan of sustainable multimodal transport, and not simply because it was the best paid or closest manufacturing job that would hire them.

How many of us truly work in an industry based wholly on our interests and beliefs, rather than what pays the bills?

In a production company with around 20 staff we have 1 who only cycles, 2 who cycle most days but sometimes need to drive and 1 who mostly drives but sometimes cycles if evening commitments and weather are in their favor. Everyone else drives.

So with out the whole country changing infrastructure and attitudes its not going to be a feasable thing without carparking on site.

Industrial units should outlive the company that built it. In years to come when Brompton either don't exist or have moved again there would be this unit that nobody wants because there's nowhere to park.

I don't blame the planners at all - they're looking further ahead.

How would this work for handicapped people who have to drive to work/ can't walk a long distance?  Not everybody can walk long distances or cycle their whole working lives.

Just because there would be a car park doesn't mean you have to drive.  If Brompton insisted then that would be discrimination!

It’s almost like National Highways have a vested interest in building/maintaining car dependency. Put me down as disappointed but unsurprised.

Bunch of dinosaurs desperately trying to create and maintain car-dependent places, often by being actively hostile to anything that might threaten or even marginally seek to curb that private car domination.

See also any county highways department.

How would this work for handicapped people who have to drive to work/ can’t walk a long distance? Not everybody can walk long distances or cycle their whole working lives.

The plan says no NEW parking will be added that doesn't mean that there won't be any parking on site. I'm sure that Brompton will have done their diligence on DDA compliance. Yet again Road CC have gone for the click-bait news approach. It's really disappointing from them.

How would this work for handicapped people

Something quite depressing in the fact that the notion of slightly inconveniencing some motorists is somehow deemed too radical.

It's not about inconvenience to the motorists; it's about what motorists will do to the surrounding area when reality happens. We see the same at our local primary school in a micro way. Council gets complaints from locals about parking nearby clogging up roads, Highways / council come and double yellow line all over the place reducing the parking by half. School says we all need to walk/bus whatever.

Net result? Whole village now has a parking/clogging issue around pick up and the problem is much worse as the round trip time for parking, getting to school, collecting, getting back to the car has doubled maybe more, so the effect of the parking problem has been doubled. The lesson is that making something inconvenient just isn't enough.

The plan says no NEW parking will be added that doesn’t mean that there won’t be any parking on site.

Is this not a new build - therefore there can't be any parking already there.

(I think they are referencing the existing parking for the shopping centre)

Agree they are asshats, but if you think everyone who works can walk or cycle to the workplace, you might want to think that through.

(Being married to a blue badge holder with a successful career....)

Our office houses 1500+ people and has two parking spaces and 240 bike spaces.

It is right next to Bank/Monument station though...

I made a pitcher

I’m fairly sure that the head of National Highways posts on here. 🙂

I am incredibly childish and modified the picher
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I can see the issue of not being able to prevent people coming in by car and them being a nuisance elsewhere as they look for parking offsite. I’ve been wondering for a while though whether it could be possible to make it so that certain new build domestic properties can’t have a car registered to them or insured at that address. Could make for a good way of reducing car ownership, and making infill sites more viable, perhaps alongside an incentive of reduced council tax?

some people seem to be missing my point, its not about brompton forcing people to drive (and I would be surprised if they haven't already covered all the bases for blue badge holders) or not. Its national highways saying you must make allowances for _some_ people to drive, then once brompton submitted to that, they change it to you must build a car park for _many_ people to drive. NH seemingly fully committed to induced demand

To put the alternative perspective, nearby somebody purchased a pub and got planning permission to build on the car park because they were changing it to a “cycling destination” so everyone would walk and ride there. Predictably most people still drive there and the the local residents have to suffer all the parked cars now on the streets.

Perhaps the HA has been through the same experience themselves on other large scale developments and has now got policies for what proportion of a new development must have parking - whatever the owner might promise.

I’ve been wondering for a while though whether it could be possible to make it so that certain new build domestic properties can’t have a car registered to them or insured at that address.

You could attach a covenant the house in the same way quite a few new build estates have bans on vans and the like. The difficulty would be finding someone who cares enough to enforce it and even then be able to monitor it.

The original Brompton plan does seem implausible unless they are giving serious incentives to staff to avoid car use and even then I am not sure it would be entirely avoidable.

Those of you saying "but what about disabled people". Have you considered that:

1) Mandating huge car parks means buildings are spread out further, which if you do have reduced mobility means further to walk/roll. Look at a town from above, and mentally subtract the 2/3rds of the land given over to dual carriageways and car parks. Imagine how much more accessible that town would be to someone in a wheelchair or walking with a guide dog / cane if all the useful bits were only 1/3 the distance apart?
2) Not every disability means you'll be in a car. Car's only help people with mobility impairments that only impair in specific ways.

And most obviously:
3) If there's public transport then it's equitable for all. It's the car dependency that's disabling. 2million+ people commute in and out of London daily. Able bodied, blind, deaf, in a wheelchair, MND, cerebral palsy, they all get on public transport just the same and get off again at the other end. Most of their workplaces will have zero parking, blue badge or otherwise.

I mean, I’m assuming they’ll put in tunnels/bridges when they build the cycle lanes to it, like they have for all the others.

Tunnels on a floodplain? Will they be on stilts too?

Perhaps its just good advertising for Brompton and they have no intention of building it like that anyway.

A pretty 3d picture of a factory without a car park and £10,000 spent on a planning consultant to pretend to be serious about the application a few times is cheaper than a flashy advertising campaign and generates a tonne of media posts, comments and social media buzz about the brand whilst making them look like the good guys and serious about their brand ethos etc.

Dropping my childishness for the moment.

If you make a building for 4,000 people then you have to assume that a proportion of them will drive. Therefor you need to provide parking for that proportion. Renting a nearby carpark that is available due to underutilisation of the adjoining facility is not a viable alternative as the owners may stop renting it to you if they get busy again and use all the spaces.The current company may be fully staffed by long haired lentil eating cyclists but times change and so do businesses so you have to assume that this "our employees don't drive" won't necessarily apply in the future.

The argument then boils down to what proportion of 4,000 people you have to provide parking for and where that parking can be located.

On site might be fine. A mile down the road with park and ride might be fine as long as they own the carpark, or it is somehow tied to the main building lease.

The headline that the NH have refused to consider off-site par=king seems churlish, if true. I suspect there might be a little more to it than bluff refusal but we don't have all the details.

TBF, it says potentially 4,000 jobs (some of these may be indirect). It's also a factory, so there will be shifts. Might be less than 500 people there at once. If most people ride/walk/PT/carshare it might be down to 150 spaces max. The multistorey carpark Brompton want to use is empty on Googlemaps - might be 1000 spaces!

You could attach a covenant the house in the same way quite a few new build estates have bans on vans and the like. The difficulty would be finding someone who cares enough to enforce it and even then be able to monitor it.

This is pretty much the crux of the Brompton thing, any covenant to ban cars or vans from an estate just means people jam up the local streets by parking as close as possible without being on the estate.

If there’s public transport then it’s equitable for all

The word "if" is doing a lot of lifting there. If we had decent public transport, a lot of societys problems would be reduced

Just as bad as the ****whits running Derby City Council.

My (now former) employer were building a new office on reclaimed former gas works land.  Sensible surveys were done for travel and where the 200-250 employees lived etc. But the moronic council ignored it all and would only allow about 2/3 of the necessary parking. Most people had no alternative to driving as the public services were shiite, started too late and ended too early, or the rail service got closed by Beeching in the 60s and lived 10 or 20 or 30 miles away.

It's also a shame they seem to think it's necessary to build on fields when there's some seemingly unused industrial land less than 2 miles to the east.

Perhaps its just good advertising for Brompton and they have no intention of building it like that anyway.

You may have a point given that they took 6 months to get back to the HA with answers to a few questions and it's been 2 years since they first made the announcement.  Obvs not in a rush!

There are literally 1000+ existing car parking spaces within a mile of the site. A quick look on Google (2019) shows very low occupancy...

I wonder how many thousands of tons of concrete go into making such a flagship green building ?

Why would you need 4,000 people to build 200,000 bikes a year ?

How many of the current/potential employees will live within cycling distance of the factory and how many will want to cycle through rain/sleet/snow on somewhere between 1/3-1/2 of the 225 work days a year?  Last time I looked Kent wasn't a particularly cheap place to live and factories don't pay a massive amount meaning that moving near isn't necessarily that easy.

You also can't build bikes whilst Working From Home.

I do appreciate the utopian dream but I'm not sure it's a practical solution.

Christ, there are some pussies on here. It is literally a mile from a well-connected town centre. Buses, car-sharing, walking + cycling are all options.

A couple of questions:

- why do we *have* to assume x number of people have to drive there?

- if a company like Brompton can’t try something like this to move the dial on car dependency then who can?

It is literally a mile from a well-connected town centre. Buses, car-sharing, walking + cycling are all options.

Which National Highways/council/bus companies should be figuring out.

Christ, there are some pussies on here. It is literally a mile from a well-connected town centre. Buses, car-sharing, walking + cycling are all options.

if a company like Brompton can’t try something like this to move the dial on car dependency then who can?

too many people look at something like this and see problems and just fling their hands up and say "can't be done"... what we actually need to do is figure out solutions, primarily because the current way of doing things is just not sustainable!!

"I’ve been wondering for a while though whether it could be possible to make it so that certain new build domestic properties can’t have a car registered to them or insured at that address."

It is common for new build houses within controlled parking areas in Glasgow to be given planning permission with the condition the occupants will never qualify for parking permits.  Like a block built in my sister's street.  She went to view the show flat. Funnily enough the saleswoman never mentioned that fesature.

Christ, there are some pussies on here

I used to cycle ten miles each way and then 5 miles before working from home. However I never had to wait in a long queue for the couple of showers that the offices had.
So I cant blame national highways for being somewhat cynical about the plan.
Going for a plan in the middle perhaps but their plan of all or nothing and then relying on another company seems a tad problematic.

The reality is the majority of people don’t want to walk a mile into the office from a transport hub they’ve had to get to on top. They’ll get in the car and try and park and Highways knows that.

On top the majority of people working for Brompton probably don’t care about cycling, to them it’s a job not a way of life.

I can see both sides to this. Whilst I applaud Brompton for trying to be the change, I can see the planning authorities position too. Firstly parking on a third parities land as a solution is a non starter. Yes, you might get an agreement now, but in 5 years? Or 20 years when that car park is built on..... And ultimately Brompton are asking for planning permission to build an industrial unit, and they might well have the culture and ethos to only employ people who will travel to work by bike or public transport. But think about the life of the building - if I think of any industrial that's been errected for more than 20 years I struggle to think of one still occupied by the same company it was when built. What happens when Brompton go bust or move on to bigger unit in 10 years time? Will the next company have the same ethos or will Brompton pull it down and someone starts over on the site.