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The sight of a postman pedalling down the street will become much rarer under plans by the Royal Mail to phase out thousands of bicycles and replace them with vans, starts the petition.
To sign, supply an email address on the No 10 website and click on a confirmatory email.
The petition continues:
"Environmental groups have queried why the Royal Mail would replace a sustainable form of transport with one that causes congestion and is dependent on fossil fuels. Bicycles have been used to deliver post since 1880 and the Royal Mail has more than 16,000, made by the British company Pashley.
"Until recently, bicycles are used on a quarter of the country’s 65,000 delivery routes.
"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."
The petition wants the Government to guarantee the right of Royal Mail posties to have the option to use bicycles to deliver post and to commit to not destroying the unwanted bicycles but to send them to charities such as Re~Cycle.
However, Re~Cycle could be inundated with ex-postal bikes and wouldn’t be able to store them all.
According to the Pashley website, the company’s Mailstar bicycle is "designed to operate in the toughest of conditions [and] this cutting edge machine is easy to maintain, dependable and capable of carrying loads of up to twenty four kilos."
