Located next to Carnaby Street, in the London’s media, advertising and entertainment district, H2 Bike Run is the brainchild of property developer and keen cyclist Piers Slater. Like many cyclists he was fed up with arriving at work hot and sweaty, then having to shower and change in cramped offices or health clubs. Tired of this and of using poor facilities he decided to create a solution to the problem.

With the growing popularity of commuter cycling in London, Slater invested £1.9m raised from family and friends to develop the first H2 Bike Run facility which has been built on the site of a former car park. Eventually he plans to develop the concept into a chain across the capital and believes there is a demand for up to 20 clubs across central London. He has already identified 10 locations for development where the whole potential catchment area is within a five-minute walk.

The club offers 300 secure bike parking spaces inside the building on Josta racks - useful in Soho where space and parking, even for cyclists, is at a premium - together with more than 40 luxury showers, well appointed changing facilities – the women’s ones even provide hair straighteners so that female cyclists can smarten up their helmet hair before the working day - 1,400 lockers, sports therapy, a laundry service, bike servicing, cycle retail accessories and repairs and a small gym equipped with kettle bells, medicine balls and a ‘War machine’ system of pulleys, which is claimed to be a more holistic way of working the body’s muscles.

Personal trainers are available, and the whole set-up is designed to fit in with the likely needs and time constraints of commuters. And for cyclists who want more, there is a large spin studio. This is affiliated to the New York-based Spinning programme that guarantees serious quality workouts. A timetable tells you in advance who your instructor is, and whether the session will be an endurance, interval, strength or race/recovery ride. It also indicates the target heart-rate zones.

As well as attracting individual memberships, H2 Bike Run believes the clubs will appeal to employers who will see corporate membership as a cost-effective alternative to providing facilities for cyclists and runners themselves.

From the start of the project Slater knew that a high level of security for the extensive locker facilities at the club was something that had to be right first time. With work bound cyclists and runners arriving with their personal possessions including money, smart phones, laptop computers and the like, his lockers required a secure and reliable solution that could be customised to meet H2 Bike Run’s specific environment.

“As world leaders in advanced battery powered wireless access control solutions, the Salto XS4 electronic locker lock was ideal for H2 Bike Run,” comments Chris Saxby of Ansador Ltd, Salto’s local business partner. “Working in consultation with Piers Slater and Salto we designed and installed a highly secure and flexible access control system to meet all of the security demands of the locker room environment at H2 Bike Run.

The XS4 locker lock can be fully integrated with the Salto access control solution or be operated as a stand-alone system. Part of the brief was that the lockers had to be flexible enough to allow for change of use patterns, allowing for permanent storage use or variable – maximum 2 hours – use, so to achieve this we fitted 1,400 lockers locks as well as 9 XS4 E9450 electronic escutcheon handle sets to provide the benefits of full access control rights programmed via software as required and an automatic audit trail facility to record the last 1000 events at each locker,” Saxby continues.

Most OEM lockers are supplied with very basic mechanical locks that offer little in the way of protection. Salto XS4 electronic locker locks solve this problem by offering the latest in state-of-the-art electronic access control technology in a simple easy to use format.

“With an ergonomically designed twist operated locking handle making for easy use, even with wet hands, and a durable wipe clean construction that’s highly resistant to chemicals, UV radiation and physical wear and tear, our XS4 locker lock solution has added real flexibility to the security requirement of H2 Bike Run,” comments Rex Palmer, Area Sales Manager for Salto Systems. “The battery pack, electronic components and locking mechanism are all located on the inside of the locker door, safe from potential vandalism or sabotage.”

The access reader is built into the locking handle and the ID carrier - key card, wristband, key fob or bracelet using i-Button, Mifare, Mifare plus, Desfire, Desfire EV1, Ultralight C, HID Iclass, Legic, Picopass or Skidata technology – is simply presented to the reader and the XS4 locker lock will grant or deny access. A family option allows for multiple ID carriers to operate a single locker if required.
With future expansion plans and a possible move to other cities, the flexible XS4 locker lock system can easily grow to meet ongoing security requirements for H2 Bike Run.