Royal Mail to replace bikes with vans

LONDON, May 9 (UPI) -- Great Britain's Royal Mail plans to phase out thousands of bicycles and replace them with delivery vans, officials said.

The bikes currently in use will be shipped by charities to Africa. The switch to vans is aimed at making daily deliveries more quickly, The Times of London reported Saturday.

The plan has come under fire from environmental groups critical of replacing a sustainable form of transportation with one that causes traffic congestion and is dependent on fossil fuels.

"The bicycle is ideally suited to the job of delivering mail. You can park them anywhere and they don't cause any congestion. Even during this winter's severe snow, the post continued to be delivered by bike," said Margaret Wright, a Green councilor on Cambridge City Council.

The Royal Mail has chosen cities to test the plan, including Cambridge, Plymouth, Durham and Lincoln.

While most of the vans will be powered by diesel, the Royal Mail is experimenting with electric vans.

"We continue to look at ways we can deliver the mail as efficiently as possible to our customers."

Asked how many bicycles were likely to be removed, a Royal Mail spokesman said: "Nothing has been decided."

The newspaper noted that the Royal Mail has donated more than 12,000 bikes to the charity Re-Cycle since 1997. Re-Cycle ships the bikes to Ghana, Liberia, Namibia and South Africa.