Rob Ainsley

wants to park his bicycle

“We’ve been shopping by pannier all century now, yet we’ve miraculously escaped starvation”

One well-known supermarket likes to tell us that, it’s ‘Helping [us] spend less every day’. It’s true for cyclists, anyway, because the parking’s so terrible, we’re less likely to go there. We campaigners spend a lot of time talking about safe school and commuting routes. Rightly so: ease congestion, reduce pollution, infuriate anti-cyclist trolls – win-win-win. But the supermarket run gets overlooked, despite being a massive part of the UK economy: £194bn a year, 14 per cent of employment. Not everyone goes to school or a workplace, but everyone shops. Half of us visit a store every day, usually for just-ran-out-ofs.

Fewer people drive than supermarketeers think. Even among affluent home-owning families, 12 per cent have no car access, while for less-flush single renters it’s 60 per cent. Online shopping is all very well, but the grocery run can be a vital impetus to get actively out of the house. Many a shouty, ill-informed fool (online commenter, pub bore, rentaquote newspaper columnist, Lord Winston etc) has ‘clinched’ an anti-cycling diatribe by maintaining it’s ‘impossible’ to shop by bike. Well, we’ve been doing it by pannier all century now, yet miraculously escaped starvation or systemic household collapse. Granted, my panniers smell of leaked cream and imperfectly sealed takeaway curry. And like most people these days, we’re shopping smaller and more often at more stores, seeking the quality/price-curve maxima: Lidl fresh pastries; Aldi chocolate; Tesco cornflakes; Co-op wine. Bikes suit such multi-stop trips perfectly.

But supermarkets evidently swallow the columnist myths. They’re notorious for tricks to make us spend more: sales-optimised layouts, bewildering price structures, end-of-aisle ‘special offers’ that are actually worse value. Yet with cyclists, many actively discourage us with awful parking – usually down to managerial disinterest, dozy contractors and lack of monitoring by cashstrapped councils.

Like ‘butterfly clips’ that only secure the front wheel (value £50) not the rest of your bike (value £500; or when the thief flogs it on Gumtree, £50). Or ‘Sheffield stands’ too close together to put even one laden bike per rack, never mind two. Or racks installed hard against the building; well, as cyclists we’re used to banging our head against a brick wall.

Campaigning for better facilities can be an exercise in futile circularity. The council blames the supermarket, the supermarket blames the landlord, the landlord blames the council – if they answer emails at all. But it’s worth it. If only the supermarkets can recognise the 12 per cent-plus of the population currently ignored, then everyone would benefit. Yes, bringing typically dismal racks up to scratch might cost four figures, but so would four quarter-page ads in a local rag.

Cyclists buy pannierloads not bootloads at a time, but more often. Per square metre of parking, we reckon bikes generate supermarkets more revenue. We’re a wide economic demographic, certainly not ‘poor’: a decent box-front bike or child-carrying multi-seater costs as much as a car.

So yes, Tesco, you have helped us spend a little less with you. Because we now do our big shop at Asda, because the bike parking’s far better. It had been rubbish, but we lobbied the manager – who confessed he’d never thought about it – and they installed well-spaced, well-lit, secure, covered, convenient bike racks in otherwise unused space by the trolleys and the entrance.

I wonder if we can also persuade Asda to put the plastic lid back on tubs of double cream. That vulnerable foil top is rather prone to leaking into my panniers.