Public speaking at Worcester City Council meeting 19th May 2026
On Tuesday 19th May yours truly attended Worcester City Council’s Policy and Resources Committee meeting to participate in the meeting in the public speaking slot. On the agenda was an amendment to the agreed service provision with Beryl Bikes, the company providing the citywide bike hire scheme; the actual usage of the bikes is about 50% of what was originally expected making the scheme financially unsustainable.
Despite there being some acknowledged problems with the implementation of the scheme by Beryl (all fixable), and a limitation on where bays can go caused by the County decision that no bays could result in a loss of car parking spaces (unreasonable, short sighted and dumb), the biggest barrier to the scheme meeting expectations is a lack of cycling infrastructure in the city, incidentally an observation made multiple times by Bike Worcester from the earliest concept of a hire bike scheme in Worcester to now (Rob here: ‘The routes between those nodes of where the cycle hubs might be, some of those routes are extremely unpalatable for a novice or inexperienced cyclist, and that poses a very significant, and maybe insurmountable barrier, for new users of the cycle hire scheme.’).
It is no surprise that in a city with negligible fully segregated routes for people riding bikes, and nothing that could be described as a network of good quality routes, that usage rates for a hire bike scheme are notably lower than other comparable cities.
Here’s the gist of the words I said (you can watch it here); as always there is so much more that needed to be said, but the public speaking slot is limited to 5 minutes.
Dan from Bike Worcester, your friendly neighbourhood bloke on a bike, here to talk about active travel, notably cycling in and around Worcester, and offer some suggestions as to why Beryl Bike usage isn’t meeting expectations, and maybe how we can turn that around.
For those of you who use a bike as a mode of transport in the city I hope you’re in agreement that there are notable barriers to people travelling on two wheels, and for those of you who don’t travel by bike, what’s stopping you, because these are the same barriers stopping other people, and the same barriers limiting the use of the Beryl scheme.
To be clear, I don’t think there’s any evidence to suggest the scheme isn’t meeting expectations as a result of a lack of demand; our bike bus provision has grown over the same period, and it’s worth a cross check against County bike counters on the bridges and elsewhere in the city.
If you look elsewhere there seems to be a reasonable correlation with the success or otherwise of bike hire schemes seems with the amount of decent cycling infrastructure in that location, and certainly that’s a notable difference between Hereford and Worcester; Hereford continues to roll out improvements, in Worcester we still don’t have an agreed LCWIP. Where improvements are made, they are acknowledged and celebrated, whether that’s Kepax, or the Shrub Hill route, or a metal barrier being removed, but they are piecemeal, they do not form a network, and the pace appears to be much slower than other towns and cities.
It is of note that the County is responsible for the maintenance of 4177 km roads, 3357 footways, 139 km shared use, but 0 km of segregated cycleways, these are their own figures. It is also of note that the County still shares the accolade of the worst rated LA as determined by Active Travel England.
The biggest barrier to achieving modal shift from private car use to walking and cycling, increasing rates of active travel in the city, and likely the success of the Beryl scheme, is that there are no legal safe routes across the city centre, either north south or east west, caused by the traffic regulation orders that prohibit cycling, and also, interestingly and probably illegally, prohibit the use of mobility scooters.
May 2017
Worcester and Lincoln are the last two cathedral cities in the UK to still have a cycling ban in the main parts of the city. Coupled with the heavily trafficked main roads surrounding the city, any proposal to strictly enforce the cycling ban would only serve to push cyclists out of the city and onto unsuitable alternatives.
As such, and with the caveat any such proposal takes into consideration all aspects of public safety, we would positively endorse the removal of the restriction in favour of a comprehensive review of pedestrian and cyclist provision with Worcester City.
Timeline of the TRO:
Implemented in 2006 10:30 16:30
Consultation 2017 with the recommendation to remove it
2019 / 2020 hours extended
September 2024 review
February 2025 West Mercia
March 2026 soft review, there will be no change
I’ve been told by a County officer that the TRO isn’t for people cycling sensibly and it’s OK to cycle in the TRO, I’m not sure I agree with that, however every day people do cycle on streets covered by the TROs without any incident; interestingly we’ve got a Telraam counter installed on the High Street counting pedestrians, bikes and motor vehicles as we speak. The trouble is the TRO gives a perception that the city isn’t welcoming for people riding bikes, and it also definitely changes behaviour. Example Rob.
3 requests from Bike Worcester:
As a Council, collectively and cross party, you insist on an immediate review of the city centre TROs by the County Council with the requirement that safe routes are provided north south and east west through the city centre, and that these are implemented before the start of the next school year.
We’re aiming for a bike bus in every primary school in Worcester before the next bike bus summit in April 2027, we’d like both councillor and officer support in achieving this.
There is loads more that you as a Council could do to make the scheme a success, but given 5 minutes I unfortunately don’t have time to cover them, so please, come and talk to us, let’s start a conversation as to how Beryl will still be in the city in 5 years.
As always, Bike Worcester’s knowledge, expertise and experience is available for you all to use as a resource, free of charge.
As a council, both officers and councillors, have you done everything you could have done to support the scheme? If you’ve just answered yes, you haven’t been listening to the community in Worcester who already travel by bike.
