What concerns me is that most rail stations are not staffed from the first to the last train every day. In the last 20 years thousands of bicycles have been stolen from stations or vandalised at stations and the value of these stolen bikes each year on average is greater than what the Victorian government spends on bicycle facilities.
I know this because as a sub-consultant I surveyed bicycle storage provided on every rail station on the metropolitan rail system in 1985 and in 2003 and surveyed the additional bicycle lockers provided since then.

There no trial is being conducted of how to provide theft and vandal resistant bicycle storage facilities at the unstaffed stations. That is half the stations on the system. (around 110 stations) The so- called trial of a lockup cage is at a station that is staffed from the first to the last train every day and their is no is no mention
of combatting bicycle theft and vandalism at unmanned stations.

Past experience shows that the use of bicycle lockers at unmanned stations was never managed competently and even on many of the staffed stations rail staff never managed the lockers properly and line managers turned a blind eye to what was going on. Even members of the police checking for people without tickets and troublesome rail patrons where not interested in stole bicycles.

Before going along with BVs improved but still deficient policies I suggest that BV find out how many bicycles are stolen or vandalized at staffed and unmanned stations and have the minister set in place a system for monitoring such petty crimes because.

Data on reported bicycle thefts at stations are available on the police computer and that data is obtainable and can factored up by BV surveying its own members to see what proportion of them who have had a bicycle stolen and reported to the police or not.

Each year the State Bicycle Advisory Committee should have been monitoring the bicycle theft problem generally and at stations in particularly but it has failed to do so because of piss weak advocacy by its cyclist members. The Minister for Transport needs to request
the Minister for Roads who hosts the SBAC to issue a ministerial objective for this data to be obtained .

It would be good idea if the Minister was asked to send a staffer on a quick round the world tour of State of the Art secure bicycle storage systems and produce a report with specific recommendations on how best to provide secure bicycle storage on unmanned stations.

The only reason she would support the idea was if she really understood those people working for her who had failed to deal with this problem where genetic throwbacks of an early pre-human known as Homo-Fuckwitticus

Any way the tour would take about two weeks working to a tight schedule..

1. Fly to Brisbane and inspect the latest design of bicycle locker.

2. From there to Perth to inspect Lock up cages as freestanding units
and as integrated units built into a new station.

3. Fly from Perth to Amsterdam to inspect lockers and talk with planners
responsible for developing new cycle storage systems that have been developed there in 3 cities. Including the central rail station with 7000 securely stored bikes in Amsterdam.

4. Fly to California to study new lockers on the Bart system designed to
maximise locker usage.

5. Fly to Osaka in Japan to inspect the secure bicycle storage facilities at the Centralrail station and the modal interchange where where bus and train users both securely store their bikes above the interchange. She could also inspect a fully automated bicycle storage unit for storing 2000 bicycles in the airspace over a station.

6. Fly back to Melbourne

Best of all would she consider visiting some of these installations herself
on her next overseas trip.

I can provide a detailed intinery and suggest the contacts that need to be made.

I f that is not possible I could provide a power point presentation of much of the above.

Bye Alan.