Bike Storage
Having locations to store a bike, whether they are locations that the bike can be secured to a stand / railing (preferably with a CCTV), or whether they are locations with truly secure bike storage, are absolutely essential in making cycling a viable means of transport around the area. A council has a parking strategy for vehicles, so why not for bicycles?
Whitby currently has very limited locations with bike stands : Railway Station, Leisure Centre, Pannett Park, and a few supermarkets are all that are available. There are currently no locations with secure bike storage.
We would like to, at some point, help to fund bike storage facilities in convenient places so that people can leave their bike and be confident of coming back to it later. These can be coupled with simple bike repair stations with facilities for pumping tyres and simple fixes.
Esk Valley Railway
The only railway station(s) up the Esk Valley with bike storage currently is Whitby Railway Station, with 6 rack places (arguably 12 if you count each as double-sided, but no CCTV hence not secure). Clearly we need to aim for having bike storage at many stations to be able to facilitate people cycling to the local railway station and commuting from there. This is the responsibility of Northern Rail, and surely there is a major opportunity for them to invest in basic storage so that people can cycle to the station, lock their bike up, and take the train wherever they want to go.
If we look at the numbers of passengers using the different stations along the Esk Valley line, we can see which stations are more needing of bike storage facilities. The 2023-2024 station utilisation figures are as follows. The clear top priorities from this data are for much enhanced bike storage at Whitby station, and for addition of bike storage facilities at Grosmont and Glaisdale, though maybe Danby should be included also.
| Station | No. of trains per day (inbound) | Total no. of passengers (inbound + outbound) | No. of passengers / train in year | Average no. of passengers / train |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Whitby | 5 | 143408 | 14341 | 39.8 |
| Ruswarp | 5 | 4002 | 400 | 1.1 |
| Sleights | 5 | 6844 | 684 | 1.9 |
| Grosmont | 5 | 12374 | 1237 | 3.4 |
| Egton | 5 | 10554 | 1055 | 2.9 |
| Glaisdale | 5 | 19178 | 1918 | 5.3 |
| Lealholm | 5 | 8598 | 860 | 2.4 |
| Danby | 5 | 7414 | 741 | 2.1 |
| Castleton Moor | 5 | 5756 | 576 | 1.6 |
| Commondale | 5 | 2224 | 222 | 0.6 |
| Kildale | 5 | 1450 | 145 | 0.4 |
| Battersby | 5 | 2268 | 227 | 0.6 |
| Great Ayton | 7 | 12360 | 883 | 2.5 |
| Nunthorpe | 18 | 54080 | 1502 | 4.2 |
| Gypsy Lane | 18 | 38398 | 1067 | 3.0 |
| Marton | 18 | 30386 | 844 | 2.3 |
| James Cook Hosp | 18 | 52370 | 1455 | 4.0 |
In accordance with our data transparency policy, this table is downloadable in spreadsheet format. This data was obtained from the Office of Road and Rail (and the downloadable spreadsheet contains numbers for all years from 2021 onwards).