As a capital city with a number of large venues we do get our fair share of sporting events, concerts and festivals here in Cardiff. However, they often lead to a bit of a transport nightmare for many of us.
The trouble is, travel advice for these events is often based around the assumption that people will drive, or use an already overcrowded public transport system. However, there is another way…
Bike Parking!
One of the things we’ve noticed with our bike parking project is that bike parking is rarely publicised. There’s little mention of it on websites, even for permanent destinations like our museums, arenas and stadiums.
Even if bike parking is mentioned, it is usually quite vague and gives little indication of quantity (or indeed where it is). However, there’s an opportunity here to make a concerted effort to change transport behaviours and encourage people to leave their cars at home, avoiding the gridlock and expensive parking.
The Swalec Stadium is on the Taff Trail; the Millennium Principality Stadium is on the Taff Trail (mostly); the Millennium Centre is on the Taff Trail; the Cardiff City Stadium is on the Ely Trail.
So many big venues that are easily accessible by bike. So why aren’t we promoting cycling to these venues as an option?
Yes, yes that was a rhetorical question…
We’ve spent so long engineering cycling out of our society that many of us no longer consider it a transport option. However, it still is one…and a very good one at that.
Bike parking is invariably free; you can use the trails to avoid the congestion and you have no impact on Cardiff’s air quality. Best of all, it’s also much healthier for you.
It is frustrating that the Council appears reluctant to even mention cycling on its travel advice page for large events, even though it really should be promoting it as part of the Active Travel Act and the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act.
To its credit, the Millennium Centre now includes instructions on its website for getting to it by bike, as does the Swalec Stadium, which also boasts of the 30 spaces it has under the Pro Copy stand (awesome!). The same cannot be said for the Mi…Principality Stadium or the Cardiff City Stadium, unfortunately.
However, these mass events that attract thousands of people could theoretically require a large increase in bike racks compared to what is normally provided.
There are companies like Cyclehoop that can provide temporary cycle parking, but it would be far easier if venues planned for the bicycle traffic they wanted to have in the first place!
Cardiff By Bike 