Hi all,
Bike parking at stations crops up here quite often, as does
taking bikes on planes/trains. But there doesn't seem to be much
on Google's archive about parking bikes at airports.
Just in case anyone's interested, I recently discovered that
Southampton airport has a bike park. Really tiny, tucked away
inside the short-stay carpark. And there aren't any signposts to
it. And it's not marked on the short-stay carpark "how to walk
to where you left your car" maps. Not quite hidden in a basement
with no light and a locked door marked "Beware of the Tiger", but
pretty low-profile.
I needed to fly from Southampton, and biking seemed by far the
best way of getting from home to airport, but I wasn't sure of
parking facilities. I knew there was a (tiny) bike park on the
airport side of the Parkway railway station, but couldn't find
anything about airport-specific bike parking. So I trundled out,
parked in the station bike park, and went walkabout. At least
the lady on the airport information desk knew about the bike
park, but only that it was in the short-stay carpark.
Is there some sort of obligation on airport operators to provide
bike parking? If so, are they able to convert it to carparking
if it gets little or no use? At least the Southampton bike rack
seemed to be well-patronised on the day I used it.
One minor irritation was that, since I wasn't taking hold
luggage, I had to leave a fair bit of the toolkit at home. Too
likely to be classed as a "potential weapon". No lockers by the
bike rack, inevitably. And the X-ray folk were deeply unhappy
about a pair of bike lights each with 2 D cells!
</ramble>
--
Tim Forcer [email hidden]
The University of Southampton, UK
The University is not responsible for my opinions