Park and Ride (your bike, that is)

We know there are a good number of the worthy citizens of North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Bath and North East Somerset who work in Bristol but would like the option to complete part of their journey by bike. This makes perfect sense given that bikes always win the commuter challenge with car and bus to get into the city, never mind the health benefits.

We had an interesting call this week from someone using the Long Ashton Park and Ride who'd been told he couldn't use the car park if he was then using his bike.

So what's the story?  is it possible to park and ride your bike without annoying local residents by parking on their streets?

Turns out that cyclists are already doing this at the Portway & Brislington sites. All they need to to is to ring the Park and Ride number 0117 9222910 to give their name and registration number so the site security know who they are.

At Long Ashton the site is administered by NCP and they ask that drivers get a £3.50 bus ticket stamped and left in the car windscreen (not sure whether the 20 single trip tickets for £28 will do). This is going to be a lovely ride in when Connect2 opens in a few weeks.

Plans are underway for a simple way of doing this in the same way across all sites for a nominal monthly charge to cover site and security costs and this should come in later this year.

So, you can Park and Ride, and it's going to get simpler.

Bristol's better by bike, go on,  motivate a mate.