Memorandum from Tony Cornah and Polly
Blacker (TPT 06)
To put us in context, we are Cycle Trainers,
we rely on cycling as our main means of transport (we don't own
a car) and are members of the Sheffield Cycle Campaigning group
PedalPushers (so we have a feel for what other regular cyclists
in the area think too). We feel that provision for integrating
cycling with other means of transport is so poor as to be laughable.
To take train travel in Britain first:
1. We can't book our bikes onto trains at
the same time as we book our tickets online. This means that we
can't really book online as we then risk not getting our bikes
onto the trains we've booked. The facility did exist in the past
(can't remember when it last did) but was removed by the operating
companies.
2. Calling one of the train operators to
try to book tickets and bikes at the same time often results in
various levels of frustration when the person you're talking to
either doesn't understand what you want or seems not to have been
trained in how to use the system to provide it.
3. Even when we go down to the station,
and therefore suffer the inevitable enormously lengthy queues,
the ticket officer has to book tickets first and then use a separate
system to confirm that cycle spaces are available. This often
results in several attempts before a suitable service can be identified
(and increases the length of the queue behind us!).
4. Many services restrict the number of
bikes on any service to 2: how then can a family plan a trip?
5. Some train operators don't provide a
facility to book bikes onto their trains: to be fair they are
often the most flexible companies with the more helpful staff
but it means that a long weekend away with bikes is potentially
subject to others' demands rather than being bookable. With different
operators having different rules there is a pressing need for
all staff to be trained to be as flexible as possible in all circumstances.
6. To see a functioning cycle-friendly service
try Deutsche Bahn's website (in English too) at http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/e
which covers all of Europe: how's that for integration?
Next, consider trying to plan a trip by train
and bike to Europe:
1. First reference is to the website above
http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/e which enables onward
travel after the Channel with relative easy and integration.
2. Now to Eurostar, who won't guarantee
that a bike booked onto one of their services will arrive until
up to 24 hours after you do: how do you plan a journey with that
sort of restriction in place?
Continuing with coach services:
1. I think it is the case that no coach
service will allow a conventional bike to be carried. When we
travelled fairly extensively in Central and Southern Europe for
a year we were invariably able to book our two bikes on to local
and international services as luggage: we took responsibility
for removing front wheels where necessary and stowing the bikes
in the hold but there was rarely any conflict with other demands
on the luggage space.
More locally, the Sheffield Supertram (but it
applies to all other tram services in the UK as far as I know):
1. The service operators will not allow
a conventional bike onto their trams under any circumstances.
2. It would make far more sense for the
operators to allow bikes to be carried on the less busy services
(and at slacker times of the day) always with the proviso that
pushchairs, buggies, wheelchairs, sudden influxes of passengers,
etc would have priority.
I hope that the above comments fall into your
committee's remit as the integration of all modes of public transport
with non-polluting options at either end (or even in the middle)
seems to us to be vital to helping tackle pollution and climate
change.
March 2007
| 
