“Van replacements? On your bike!”
A campaign has been launched in the UK to preserve the use of bicycles for Royal Mail deliveries. The national operator has admitted that it is looking to replace the 14,500 bikes in circulation with vans, claiming that postal workers are now required to carry heavier bags due to the growth of parcel deliveries prompted by the e-commerce boom.
In response, the CTC (the UK’s National Cyclists’ Organisation) today cycled to Victoria Embankment to deliver hundreds of protest letters to Royal Mail’s new chief executive Moya Greene. They were joined in their campaign by Lord Berkeley, Julian Huppert MP and Meg Hillier MP.
The Keep Posties Cycling campaign hopes that Greene reconsiders the decision to remove cycles from the Royal Mail transport fleet.
CTC said it was first alerted to the threat of the end of over 100 years of cycle-aided postal deliveries thanks to Re~Cycle, a charity which ships second-hand bikes to Africa where they are repaired and reused. Royal Mail had previously been a major donor with Pashley Mailstars from their fleet being transferred to Re~Cycle at the end of their working lives.
A letter to CTC vice president Tony Berkeley from Royal Mail’s former chief executive, Adam Crozier, confirms that Royal Mail plans to replace almost all of its bikes with electric trolleys that will be shipped out to neighbourhoods by van.
CTC believes Crozier’s assertion that posties on bikes violate health and safety regulations was untrue. Crozier’s comment that the increasing weights of postal deliveries necessitates new delivery technologies ignores the potential to use cargo bicycles and tricycles, already used in other European countries and by courier companies in Britain – for instance DHL and FedEx.
CTC said it will oppose any moves by Royal Mail to stop cycle deliveries, and instead would like to see cargo bikes and tricycles used to deliver larger weights of post.
