Rail strike helps bike

Press, 10 February 1982, Page 15

Rail strike helps bike

From

KEN COATES

in London

The present rail strike causes no problems in getting to work for one Londoner. Andrew Ritchie; he gets there on his bicycle.

At his workshop in Kew he has built a remarkable machine.

It takes a few seconds to fold it up into a neat package less than 60cm square, which can be carried easily. No other collapsible bicycle in the world, says Mr Ritchie, collapses so totally and easily.

Mr ’Ritchie, aged 35, an old Harovian, who studied engineering at Cambridge, says he is appalled by the amount of his life he has already given this bicycle. He had the idea in 1976 but it was not, until early last year he started making bicycles at Kew.

He made 30 for friends, and their friends, and to his relief got orders for 20 more. Then the Government granted a small firms loan enabling him to keep afloat in Britain’s very choppy economic sea.

He and a brazier, Patrick Mulligan, work on the Bromptons (the name of the bicycles) of which 56 are now on the road, with 24 more ready for delivery. Judge • Abdela has been seen arriving at the Old Bailey on one,’ Lord' Fraser, of Tulleybelton, the Scottish law lord, rides one, and Mr Ritchie himself says he rode his all through the blizzards. At £195 ($470) including V.A.T., the bicycles are rather expensive, but anyone who has one becomes a celebrity every time he folds it up in public. Privately. Mr Ritchie

hopes the rail strike will not end too soon, because it is good for business.