Setback for users of cycle '˜hub' at Leeds City Station

Services at a much-praised cycling '˜hub' at Leeds City Station are set to be drastically scaled down.
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The Leeds CyclePoint’s last day of operation in its current form will be this Sunday.

Opened in 2010 and the first site of its kind in the UK, the CyclePoint stands to the side of the taxi queue area at the front of the station.

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It offers £1.50-per-day staffed storage facilities for more than 300 bikes as well as a maintenance and repairs service and rental scheme.

The CyclePoint is operated by national retailer Evans Cycles, which has yet to respond to the YEP’s requests for a comment.

A statement on the Evans website said “sadly” it would no longer be running the site from Sunday.

A clearout was under way at the CyclePoint this lunchtime, with one member of staff saying he and his colleagues were only told yesterday what would be happening.

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A spokeswoman for Network Rail confirmed the CyclePoint would close on Sunday to members of the public without a season pass for its storage facilities.

She added: “Passengers with a season pass for the cycle hub will still be able to use it to store their bikes and we will provide a further update in due course.”

Writing on Twitter, one regular user of the site described the cutting back of its services as a “travesty”.

Another user, 42-year-old Rob Bailey, from Menston, said the reduced offering at the hub was a “shame”, given its part in Leeds’s efforts to provide residents with a much-needed integrated transport system.

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Martin Stanley, chair of the Leeds Cycling Campaign, said news of the changes had come out of the blue.

The CyclePoint’s opening eight years ago was spearheaded by Dutch transport firm Abellio in partnership with the Department for Transport, Network Rail and Metro, which at the time was West Yorkshire’s passenger transport authority.

A spokesman for the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA), which now includes Metro, today told the YEP that it had been Evans Cycles’ decision to pull out of the CyclePoint.

The WYCA spokesman said: “We are disappointed and we will be contacting the company.”