Love the design. The multistorey car park by the International station isn't being used as the international section of the station is currently closed by Euro Star. Sounds like a sensible solution as there is a cycle path next to the car park already that runs all the way down to the designer outlet and down past the planned factory site, so you could easily park your car and cycle down within 5 minute. I hope this happens. The town could do with the new facilities and the jobs. Best of luck 👍
It would be interesting to hear why they can't just expand in Greenford. There is plenty of industrial space in that area, existing public transit, housing density, and even a canal if they want an eco-friendly way to move their goods to a port for export. Their existing faculty has only a few dozen parking places not because it's eco-progressive but simply because it's in an older denser urban industrial area where open space is not wasted on seas of parking. Building on a greenfield site will always have a huge negative environmental impact. The change in location will also either force existing employees to spend an hour and a half on two trains each way, or they'll quit due to the commute. Good on Brompton for fighting mindless mandates to build new parking facilities next to unused existing ones, but in the bigger picture it might be better not to move at all.
One solution is to allow Brompton cars to park at the Lorry Park, which is an empty site, and shuttle bus employees to site. The Lorry Park is 5 minutes shuttle bus away and can hold something like 2000 lorries. Surely this must be a solution and would be a great collaboration between private initiative, local council and regional authority.
I have to admit I have some sympathy with the highways agency….and I don’t drive!! In the past ferries strikes or strikes in France have had a terrible effects on the roads in Kent. The councils have had to implement contingency plans which involved closing some roads to act as ‘parking’ for Lorries etc. which then caused serious congestion on other roads. So it will be interesting to see how this will be resolved
I think that realistically the ashford factory will not open in 2027 but much later. Therefore is still very long time for employees to think on whats next!
@@paulinedido1680 This information is coming from various cycling websites that I researched. None if them I would consider seedy but the information isn't direct from Brompton.
National Highways’ ‘concerns’ seem extreme given it’s only 4000 employees probably over several shifts. They assume everyone loves driving as much as they do. Every route to achieve net zero carbon emissions envisages substantially less driving than now. Clearly National Highways haven’t heard of this.
Why are high tech corpoate headquarters always round? :) pretty cool project... though imagine it would be difficult for them relocating employees from west london... Hope they will treat their people ok and not use it as an opportunity to cut people and pay... 19 minutes from the nearest car park to the factory... Hmm, if someone has something like, say, a folding bike, that would be ideal... :)
I think I have seen these Plans before and I suppose that cargo bikes (In Denmark mostly named "Christiania Bikes", after their Production place in the mostly sovereign area of Copenhagen!) are able to bring materials into the plant? Also the finished bikes are able to be taken away from the Factory on those. I also remember a bike-like-driven plane passing the Canal, and he could have brought a Brompton by that, so that he could have continued with exports to Paris! So these fine plans are very much a possibility!! Finn. Denmark
Dont like the design, its a very costly design and build, looks like a mini version of the Apple HQ. The management have lost the plot if they approved this.
@@TheBromptonGuy Circular builds are notoriously expensive to construct, and notorious for post-build issues and maintenance costs. Id have thought the management of the company making the the worlds greatest PRACTICAL bike design could have come up with a more innovative yet practical HQ design. The HQ design is not in the spirit of the company IMO and doesnt represent its history. Its clear that whomever designed this HQ and signed off on it, would never in a million years come up with the genius behind the Brompton bike design. Company profits being put into creating an Apple Park baby brother, ticking a bunch of nonsense modern design boxs rather than re-investing in the core product. Just my thoughts. Good luck with channel.
Wow if Brompton put 1% of their time in creating a belt drive system for their bikes = which is the future for every other bike manufacturer that’s why over the last five years the belt drive system represents 30% of all bikes produced other than Brompton obviously, for a company that’s supposed to be forward thinking seems somewhat bizarre = maybe the chain for Brompton now acts as handcuffs.
The Brompton's main feature is the fold. There may be technical problems with the Brompton bike to maintain a successful belt drive. Please let me know and I'll look into it.
@@deepindercheema There is no issue with a belt drive at all which has been proven very successfully already, the gentleman in Scotland has had many years in converting the Brompton into 18” or 20 “ wheels with an Alfine or Rolloff hubs which has 11 or 14 gears all with belt drive systems with a pulley wheel that the tension can be relaxed when folding , the rear triangle and forks he makes himself to accommodate the larger hub, my point with Brompton is they make around a hundred thousand bikes per year so ringing up Rolloff and saying can you make your 14 gear hub to fit the exciting triangle and we will purchase around 50 thousand units per year but the order will probably go up because they’re inverted a million bikes already out there in the world and many would purchase a kit to change from chain to belt drive , what I find astonishing in regards to Brompton they are not looking to the future = the statistics are out there with nearly every other bike manufacturer that the increase of belt drive systems have increased 30 % at this rate over the next five years the chains will be the smallest % sold , having talked with the Brompton community in many countries in the world they just don’t understand why Brompton are not looking ahead like all the other manufacturers = just look for yourself = categories = mountain, touring, electric, look at the increase over the last five years , the new round building that Brompton hopes to build should be called the donut of doom.
@@TheBromptonGuy WOW = Am I a little jealous of course not = a lot jealous absolutely, forgetting about me always going on or my ranting about Brompton not looking into belt drive system for their bikes , unless it’s just the way I think putting that to one side for a moment, you and I own Brompton we see that many manufacturers have increased their sales because of belt drives , would we not be asking ourselves why don’t we give Rolloff a phone call to see if they could make a unique hub for our bikes , to fit our triangle and past triangle, in my head this just doesn’t make sense.
