UKC

Recently took the train from inverness to Perth. We were told several weeks before the journey by Scotrail that no bike bookings were possible and it was "first come first serve". On arrival at Inverness we were told that bike bookings were actually obligatory and we had to abandon three bikes in Inverness and head home. The ticket agent, while apologetic about the misinformation previously provided, clearly had the attitude that cyclists were unreasonable to expect to travel on the highland train network with a bike; as if it was a ridiculous expectation "at this time of year". He said he had to turn away tourist with bikes all the time. 

I thought we lived in a country that wanted to promote foreign tourists and a healthy, active population!

It is a shambles - trying to get a bike on a train has got steadily worse as the years go by, you cannot rely on it and you get conflicting advice on whether you need/can book a bike for a trip.

You forget that whilst a healthy, active population is promoted it is not by the train companies.

It is a farce and I feel your pain.

It really is ridiculous, even if you do book there is only 4 places available on Virgin anyway.

Compare this policy to the Swiss and we look like idiots:

https://www.sbb.ch/en/station-services/auto-velo/on-the-move-by-bike.html

Yeah, I looked into the official rules on this a while back and they basically say "screw you". Some trains are first come first served and you might have to wait for the next one if it's full, others are prebooking only and you have to travel on that specific train, finding out which is which involves a load of digging into PDFs, if your journey involves a mix of prebooked and first come first served legs then there's a risk of the whole thing falling through, if you're booking tickets online then you can only find out whether there are bike spaces available on a prebooking-only leg by phoning the train company when you've already paid for your ticket, and if there's a rail replacement bus anywhere on the route then you're boned. It's infuriating.

Cynically, this is what I think is happening.

Train companies routinely schedule trains that they know will be 'full and standing' in which each square foot of floor space is an extra paying passenger.  Your bike takes up several feet of floor space.  There is 0 incentive for them to accommodate your bike, in fact they have an incentive NOT to take your bike as you take up space they could otherwise sell, therefore they really couldn't care if you can't get it on.

By the way, I'm not agreeing with them, just saying what I think is happening having commuted on trains for a good number of years - it's really just about the profit margins with the way it is run at the moment.

Edited to add - so many times I have seen poor bikers turned away from a train which is packed with a peremptory "Sorry no space" and wondered what the poor sods do now.  

Who did you do the booking through? On the website it asks you in the booking process if you want to book a bike on and how many spaces are free.

I have winged it once years ago and got away with it.

On a similar note, I was amazed to see all the public busses in Albuquerque had bike carriers on the front.  If I could cycle a few miles either end of a bus journey, that’d be amazing.  I’ve seen similar on post busses in Switzerland several decades ago.

It tells you something when the land of the automobile has better integrated public transport than us.

My mates just done the Badger Divide a couple of weeks ago. It was cheaper, faster, and more convenient to hire an Enterprise van for a one way Edinburgh - Inverness journey than it was to get their bikes there by train. Absolutely no incentive to use public transport for bikes.

Even here in the Tweed Valley and all the bike related activity that happens, there's only just been a few buses introduced with space for 4bikes at a time - and even then, you can't pre-book, the actual buses/times are only advertised the night before, it's not every service/bus on a timetable, so you could be stranded for up to 4hrs waiting for the next "bike bus" to come round with space on it. Farce.

Given the limited spaces I'd rather they were always reservable, but it could do with being easier to reserve, perhaps via a dedicated website for all TOCs.

Our railways are a joke in terms of connected transport. They are also stupidly expensive.

On Friday I took my godson and his Mum to the Natural history museum. By train it would have been £54 off peak.

Instead I drove. Parking for 5 hours: £12.50 - petrol <£10. Remind me how we are incentivised to take the train and save the planet?

If you want your argument to be heard your best bet would be to email the Rail Delivery Group and the Office of Rail and Road.

As we ditch some of the older stock and replace it with modern vehicles there is a good opportunity to include improved provision for cyclists. The DfT can incorporate this into franchise specifications to improve customer satisfaction.

I booked through Scotrail website, but by then I was told over the phone that there were no bike bookings available on the service so didn't even try.

I think the problem with franchised rail and transport services is that, ultimately, the companies are only about profit. This is understandable, as that's what they exist to do, but it doesn't serve the public properly. Bringing the services back into public hands is the only real option I can see, but there are drawbacks to that too.

I think the government find it convenient to have things franchised/outsourced, because if it was under public control then they would be on the hook for any failings. At the moment they have a company to blame when things go wrong. Chucking them off the franchise makes the state look as if they are taking action, but then the next 'winner' of the contract just provides the same shoddy service.

The issue isnt really about private or public ownership. Its about the terms of the franchise. If the government can't specify bike friendly in the franchise they arent going to specify it to a state operator either.

My guess is incompetence and oversight rather than policy.

I talked to the LNER guard on the Inverness to London train and asked what people are meant to do. He had 3 bike spaces crammed in a corner of a huge seven carriage train! I proposed that someone could perhaps remove wheels, bars, stem etc and pack the bike as a large piece of stealth luggage. He told me if they caught anyone doing this without a cycle booking they'd be chucked off the train.

I believe that if a bike is disassembled and bagged such that it meets the requirements for a piece of luggage (90x70x30cm, so you'd have a job if it had 700c wheels), it can indeed be taken as a piece of luggage, so he was talking rubbish.  Some staff do just like to be awkward.

No, it's Government policy.  Complaints about overcrowding are so high-profile that anything that allows more seats to be crammed in is priority, rather than luggage/cycle space or (e.g. on GWR) buffet cars.  I think we should just count ourselves lucky that they don't ban cycle carriage to some extent - DB, for instance, have never allowed it at all on ICE trains, and BR heavily discouraged it in the early 90s with hefty fees.

On a more positive note our local line (Heart of Wales, operated by TfW) are pretty accommodating with bikes. Not sure of official policy, but at weekends and holidays there's often multiple teenagers with downhill bikes arriving at the station to ride in local woods, along with a range of cycling touring types.

Probably helps that trains are rarely more than half full.

I used to travel regularly on the old DMU trains between Reading and Guildford. They had a whole central section (the "guard's van"), that had large double doors, and a central caged area that could take dozens of bikes and luggage; formerly used for carrying mail. Long since gone.

I have booked cycle spaces, only to turn up for the train, and find it already full, and be turned away with a shrug. Booking is no guarantee you'll get a place.

On a more positive note, I recently travelled in a GWR local train that had a large area dedicated for carrying bikes.

Arranged for three of us to travel from Newcastle to Whitehaven to ride the C2C. Purchased tickets for the full journey (2 trains, change at Carlisle) explained we had 3 bikes, no problem. 

Train from Newcastle to Carlisle, no issues. Train from Carlisle to Whitehaven guard stopped us with a 2 bike only policy. He wouldn’t listen to our argument that we had been told we could take 3 bikes when we booked. 

Karma came though when we saw 4 bikes being unloaded from the Whitehaven train as we argued. I pointed this out to the guard who then had to back down. To make it even more annoying the train was almost empty 

When I did the same journey a few years ago I couldn't pre-book the tickets, so couldn't reserve any bike places. Luckily the conductor on the Whitehaven train was OK and about 5 people got on with bikes with a quibble.

However, it's a disgrace that it's almost impossible to use the train on one of Britain's most popular long distance rides.

I used to go winter climbing and skiing quite a bit in Scotland by train. Very doable for Fort William and Aviemore from the central belt and Blair Atholl too was great if Beinn Ahglo had good cover. Getting on without a reservation never used to be too much of an issue, though I do remember once being asked to present my bike and ski reservation when getting on an empty train at Blair Atholl once by some jobsworth conductor. They eventually let me on after we established there was no such thing as a ski reservation and that there were no other bikes either on or booked on the train. Good job too as it was the last train that night!

Since then it has only got worse with fewer spaces if anything on many services and the removal of the reservation system from the East Coast / LNER website. Not an issue of profit making or state versus private i don't think - Scotrail is operated by a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dutch government and I understand its also quite tricky in France despite state ownership. Its more an issue of guidance / regulation. If they are required to provide more spaces they will. I think the fact that more people cycle and the fact that such a complex and off-putting system is clearly incompatible with healthy/greener lifestyles does make for a compelling argument which may catch the attention of politicians in Scotland at least. But we have to make an effort to make sure this argument gets to politicians.

Ahem:

https://www.scotsman.com/news-2-15012/transport/cycle-coaches-to-be-hitched...

".... I think we should just count ourselves lucky that they don't ban cycle carriage to some extent - DB, for instance, have never allowed it at all on ICE trains, and BR heavily discouraged it in the early 90s with hefty fees."

I don't remember British Rail ever charging "hefty fees" for bike carriage, in fact from the travelling I did in my teens I found the bike carriage fees to be very cheap. And the guards were pretty accommodating.  When me and a load of friends turned up without enough reservations for all our bikes the guard on the cardiff to fishguard train let us get away with 12 bikes in the guards van when there was only supposedly 8 spaces. I can't see that happening these days.

Comparing the current UK setup to the Germans is difficult. Even if you can't use ICE or the ICE Express (yes I know 2 expresses, the fools) there are still loads of trains to use.

When we did the C2C we parked in Workington and rode to Sunderland then Newcastle. For a return by train to Carlisle and the ride back into Workington.

We were equally put off by the stupid bike policy on the trains, especially as the space dedicated to bikes was plenty big enough for 4 bikes IMO. And again, as stated above, there was only a dozen people on the whole train.

Although I wish there wasn't, I can understand there being some restriction at certain times, you wouldn't want to be squeezing a load of bikes onto a weekday 8 am service between reading and London, They should be more accommodating at other times.