Forum: Underground bike parking facility doomed from start

The bicycle parking system, SecureMyBike, located within the Kampung Admiralty integrated development next to Admiralty MRT station. PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO

It is quite disconcerting to read that the Land Transport Authority (LTA) spent $4.7 million on the SecureMyBike automated underground bicycle parking system, which will cease operating on Dec 28 owing to a low take-up rate (Singapore's first automated bike parking facility to cease operation, Oct 27).

I believe that if you had asked a sampling of people on the street if such a scheme would work, they would probably have said it would fail, and fail miserably.

Users were charged a monthly fee of $48, which is more than the motorcycle parking fee ($15 to $17 per month for season parking, and a maximum of 65 cents per day for Housing Board or Urban Redevelopment Authority parking).

Yes, you get super secure and "high-tech" underground parking, but is this even necessary? Are we that short of land space?

The report also mentioned that the system failed because there was free bicycle parking readily available.

Who did LTA envisage paying that amount of money to use the underground bicycle parking system? I see the vast majority of bicycles being parked in free parking spaces everywhere.

I would appreciate it if the LTA could give us a better explanation of why it decided to spend $4.7 million on this project, which I firmly believe was doomed to fail from the beginning.

Melvin Chan Vee Ming

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on October 30, 2019, with the headline Underground bike parking facility doomed from start. Subscribe