To deliver a road event often requires the use of a sizeable fleet of vehicles and with the road event industry slowly starting to wake up to the environmental impact they can have as a whole – organisers are beginning to look for ways of doing this in a greener, more environmentally conscious way.
Along with the environmental impact, vehicles are often hired at a cost, require fuel to run, cost money to park (often at expensive city centre prices), and can be a budget risk if there are any bumps or accidents when being driven by event staff. Suitable eco/electric vans are not yet readily available through hire companies and furthermore, signing routes through city centres can be difficult as finding safe and legal parking locations in close proximity to each signage location can be a real challenge.
An easy answer to lessening the environmental impact is the use of cargo bikes. Over recent years we’ve began to push the use of cargo bikes with our clients over vehicles, where we believe it is truly a feasible alternative. We’ve used 3x wheel Cristiana bikes for sector managers on some road events, where teams are managing smaller sections of the course, and more recently have used cargo bikes to sign and de-sign entire cycling event routes.
Case Study
In 2018 we were proud to be able to trial signage deployment and collection on a much bigger scale for one of our clients. We successfully installed and removed over 600x directional arrows using a Bullitt cargo bike over a 4x stage, 300-mile event route through the UK, Netherlands & Belgium.
This was delivered in a team of two, taking four-days to deploy and four-days to collect the signage at an average of around 75 miles each day (+/- with varying lengths of each stage) and deploying and collecting around 150x signs per stage. This is almost directly comparable to what can be achieved with a van, which would usually be expected to average 10-15 miles per hour. Being on a bicycle means the visibility and exact positioning of the signage can be checked by cyclists and also that the routes through cycle lane infrastructure (when being used) flows correctly. This is especially important in countries such as Netherlands & Belgium where 80% of the time, cyclists are legally required to cycle within designated cycle lanes which are inaccessible to vehicles.
This successful trial saved our client money on van hire costs, fuel, parking costs and vehicle transport on the ferry – although they were required to slightly increase food allowances to ensure the signage team/cyclists were able to fuel their bodies appropriately!
This method of signage deployment is also enjoyable and promotes fitness – in an industry that is delivering events to promote just that!
If you’re looking to decrease environmental impact of your event logistics, why not get in touch to see if we can advise on how you could save costs while improving the quality of delivery through utilising cargo bikes where feasible! Just get in touch through the contact form.