Imperial College Healthcare St Mary's NHS Paddington

Undertaking an errand completely unrelated to Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, I wanted to park my bicycle adjacent to their 'International Centre for Circulatory Health' which also houses the 'North West London Diabetes Research Network'. There were car parking bays and motorcycle parking bays but no cycle parking stands in the entire street (okay, there was a Bike Hire docking station).

Given the health benefits of cycling to circulation and in warding off Diabetes the lack of cycle stands tickled me as quite an epic fail on behalf of the Trust and Westminster Council.

I then crossed over the canal and made my way past a Trust building with bikes locked inside to the stairway

Then past the wheelbender 'steal all my bike except my front wheel' stands that no sane person uses

and past the Trust Executive Offices. Someone there said they thought there was some cycle parking around the back of the building but not to take their word for it. I went and looked and there wasn't.

There's room for three or four bikes on railings for a ramped access to a building next door, but not today.

Down towards the road and there's the Paterson Centre with car park outside. No cycle parking though.

And on the road itself, no cycle parking in either direction.

I walked past St Mary's Hospital entrance (no cycle parking) to the Alexander Fleming Building which had no formal cycle parking but the railings were stuffed with bikes and the occasional sign saying 'don't park cycles here'.

I didn't go any further, and I'm left wondering whether a single building of this NHS Trust has purpose made, convenient and secure cycle parking outside it? Maybe the Imperial College Healthcare St Mary's NHS Trust's motto is 'Cure is better than Prevention'.

Job Creation the NHS way

'Please Give Blood' is the appeal on the back of this NHS van (MK59 LZU) parked on Tooley Street outside London Bridge Station with its hazard warning lights on shortly before 4pm today, enticing cyclists to nip out into the general traffic lane.

The van's in the mandatory cycle lane ('You MUST NOT drive or park in a cycle lane marked by a solid white line during its times of operation' - Highway Code 140) on a red route marked with double red lines ('no parking at any time').

There is no driver in the van.

It may be that the NHS has special dispensations that permit its vehicles to be parked in such a way as to encourage cyclists to mix it with the lorries and taxis. Even if they do I bet there's somewhere else the van could sensibly be parked at London Bridge that doesn't place the vulnerable road user at risk.

Maybe that's the intent though - the NHS wish to increase the demand for their services by upping the numbers Killed and Seriously Injured while also discouraging others from healthy lifestyle options that put health care professionals out of work?