I've started this petition in order to introduce safer and more secure bike parking stands in areas of medium/large distance traveling, such as Train stations and Airports. Many bikes are stolen everyday from these locations despite the substantial amount of CCTV cameras around. These areas are consistently targeted due to the repetitive schedule of many commuters, (leaving for work or school in the morning and returning in the evening) and bike thiefs exploit this.

Around 2 weeks ago my bike was stolen from the Train station at Loughborough, a very nice Black and White GT Bike worth around £300- £400. Every week day in the morning I would park my bike there, around the same Bike stand, and lock it up using 2 reasonably strong locks. On Friday (2 weeks ago) just as I got off the train and started to walk towards the bike stand I couldn't see my bike. It had been stolen. Fortunately the British Transport Police were helpful in dealing with this and are still looking for my bike.

However, I fell that people shouldn't have to worry that their bike is going to get stolen. Having more secure bike stands and parking spaces will drastically reduce bike thefts. Some colleges offer bike cages where you can put your bike inside a "bike locker" which appears to be a huge amount safer than a traditional bike lock stand. Even Loughborough College has implemented these, as displayed in the article:   http://velo-safe.com/2010/08/loughborough-college-unveils-new-cycle-parking-scheme/  .

And also one easy improvement other than safer bike stands could be putting a "watching eyes" sign to deter possible thiefs. And according to one study "Bicycle thefts decreased by 62% at the experimental locations, but increased by 65% in the control locations, suggesting that the signs were effective". http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0051738

Here is a very recent BBC article talking about bike security: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34268251

I truly believe that these safer and secure bike parking areas should be implemented in these areas and would most definitely reduce the amount of bikes stolen. Please sign this petition in order to hopefully get this implemented into our Train stations and Airports.

Thank you.