Bikes on trains

[Brianjeff50]

I know a lot has been said about this but I thought I’d add my tuppence worth from personal experience.
After my E-W ride I had planned a perfectly doable return to Suffolk via train from Oban. Scotrail Train to Glasgow. Scotrail Train 2 to Edinburgh. Train 3 (LNER) to Peterborough. Train 4 (Anglia) to Stowmarket.
According to National Rail only the LNER train needed bike booking. LNER’s weird system demands you make seat and bike reservations before a second process of buying a ticket. Which i tried - several times. It kept acknowledging my seat reservation but not my bike one. I wasn’t going to spend £130 on a ticket without knowing my bike was on board. Out of hours there is no human voice option to deal with.
After an evening of aggro I thought I’d try Trainline which seems to include bike reservations on its system. Unfortunately it told me there were no spaces on any LNER trains! Of course I still didn’t know if I had booked one of those spaces.
At that point I gave up and decided to hire a car one-way from Glasgow and buy just an Oban-Glasgow rail ticket (no bike reservation needed remember). Except on Scotrail website one was needed and the spaces were all taken!
So I pedalled down to the station where the ticket clerk said ‘no they’re not’ and gave me one.
There were six bike slots on the train - four were empty all the way.

The whole system is a shambles. I don’t think it helps that people can make multiple reservations for seats or bikes then not use them. I’d rather pay a fee for a guaranteed slot. And TBH I don’t think train companies want bikes on their main line trains.

Anyway I got home by hire van fine. Probably cost about £75 more which was outweighed by the convenience and lack of stress.

[Traction_man]

that does sound a right old pain but thanks for sharing this, it makes me wonder if you'd have been better off looking at booking from Glasgow south with Avanti say to Crewe and then taking East Midlands Trains over to Nottingham or Cross Country to get across, if LNER is not playing ball?

your experience too highlights how valuable having ticket offices and travel centres is, the online systems seem to be problematic.

[Paulatic]

At the risk of being a stuck record. Were you using an app or the operators web site? Always use the web site for bike reservations.
I’ve just chosen three random days of Oban to Glasgow and everyday comes up with cycle spaces.

Similar with LNER
Maybe you chose the same day as everyone else.

[maximus meridius]

I've just returned from our annual holiday in the Western Isles. I take a bike, but as it's a family holiday, we drive, then I pootle around on the bike on my own (none of my family cycle, much).

I'd love to do the Hebridean Way (though I've done a fair bit of it already, in bits). But utterly dread the uncertainty of being able to get to Oban/Ullapool, and back, with any sort of reliability.

Similarly I was recently forced into some cycle/train commuting, due to theft of car. But I can only do the home->home station bit on the bike. Not the destination station->work part. For the same reason.

My wife does a lot of train travel to her parents' (300 miles). Often reserving seats. When I've joined her the number of reserved seats that aren't taken up is noticeable.

I think seat reservations and bike reservations should have some sort of charge attached. So that:

1. People think twice before making a reservation they aren't committed to.

2. The railway operators (in whatever guise, public/private or some combination) have a financial incentive to make bike+train travel viable.

I don't know what the charge should be, but I don't expect something for nothing. So for my proposed Heb Way trip, I'd willingly pay an extra £50 to know exactly which trains I was going to get on, and that there would definitely be a space for the bike (that it would actually fit in). I live 300 miles from Oban.

PS. Whenever this subject comes up, there are posters here who say something along the lines of "oh, it's not that bad, all you have to do is X, Y, Z". That's OK for people who want to spent time navigating the intricacies of the various TOCs policies. I know they are trying to help, but it's not normal travel. It may seem normal to people who have spent a lot of time doing it (and in one case who works in railways), but it's not normal travel.

I hardly ever fly, but had to for work recently. I was terrified before the flight, because I realised that the very small number of flights I'd taken before had always been as part of a group. I realised I didn't even know what half the terminology meant. And I was transporting a musical instrument. Guess what, I turned up at the airport, and was guided through the process by helpful staff. That's "normal travel" even for people who haven't done it before. Bikes on trains isn't normal, and normal people aren't going to do it unless something changes.

[PH]

The whole system is a shambles. I don’t think it helps that people can make multiple reservations for seats or bikes then not use them. I’d rather pay a fee for a guaranteed slot. And TBH I don’t think train companies want bikes on their main line trains.

It is a complete shambles, I don't think train companies want passengers at all, they seem to get paid regardless.
There were other options though and I'd have explored those, but it's entirely wrong that you can't just buy the ticket you need.

that does sound a right old pain but thanks for sharing this, it makes me wonder if you'd have been better off looking at booking from Glasgow south with Avanti say to Crewe and then taking East Midlands Trains over to Nottingham or Cross Country to get across, if LNER is not playing ball?

That's would have been first choice, to save the change in Edinburgh, it's also usually cheaper. As an example I can usually find Glasgow > Derby, via Crewe for £35 and Derby <> Peterborough I do several times a year for under £15 ea way. I'm not recommending via Derby, unless you need to, it's a slow train, but I'm sure there's plenty of other options. Part of the problem is finding what the options are, I doubt anyone offers alternative routes. If you ask for Glasgow > Peterborough, online or in the ticket office, I expect it'll always route you via Edinburgh.

[PH]

I think seat reservations and bike reservations should have some sort of charge attached. So that:

There's a difference between seat and bike reservations, the bike one blocks someone else from booking it, but there's nothing stopping you from using a reserved seat if it isn't occupied. On many journeys, the reservation is compulsory, but you don't know where the bike storage is! I'm not going to walk the length of the train to sit in my reserved seat when there's empty ones closer. In an ideal World of course, the system would automatically reserve you a seat near the bike, even in a dedicated carriage, such things do exist, but are not common anywhere.

[maximus meridius]

I think seat reservations and bike reservations should have some sort of charge attached. So that:

There's a difference between seat and bike reservations, the bike one blocks someone else from booking it, but there's nothing stopping you from using a reserved seat if it isn't occupied.

You're comparing "booking" to "occupying". They aren't the same thing.

the bike one blocks someone else from booking it,

a seat booking also stops someone else from booking it.

but there's nothing stopping you from using a reserved seat if it isn't occupied.

there's nothing to stop you using a reserved bike space, if it isn't occupied, is there? For a bike, or luggage, or a buggy. Or your own, unbooked, bike.

Though there's maybe less chance of a fist fight if you move somebody's luggage out of the way to put your bike into the bike space you reserved. Unlike the goth who refused to get out of my wife's reserved seat. At least until the guard arrived.

[nosmarbaj]

An unused bike booking prevents another person from boarding with their bike on lines where cycles are carried only if booked e.g. GWR main lines. An unused seat booking doesn't prevent anyone from boarding rhe train, and they can then sit in the unoccupied seat. However I do agree the whole booking system is a mess.

[Pendodave]

Firstly, this thread should be merged with the existing "bikes on trains" thread so that any useful information is all on the same place.

Secondly, how much do you think you would need to charge to stop people not using bike spaces they'd reserved? Probably about £30 I reckon, before anyone thought twice before boarding a train an hour earlier than they thought they were going to.
Also, I've asked staff to cancel bike reservations, and I'm pretty certain they say "of course" and then don't do it. There's probably any number of innocent reasons why places aren't occupied and no practical way of avoiding them.
It's also a very "cycle holiday maker" point of view - many people use bikes on trains (even IC ones) for daily commutes to work and other life essential tasks. Doesn't really seem appropriate to price them off non-car travel, does it?

Thirdly, it always makes me sad to see people saying "oh, I'd love to do it but I'm worried/it's too hard" etc etc. I've done 4 or 5 long distance trips every year for the last 5 from Hertfordshire to points north. This is including the inner and outer Hebrides, various points along the NC500, many different locations in Northern England, and has involved a variety of train operators, buses and ferry companies. None have gone wrong, most can be planned/administered in a morning, and all have been thoroughly life enhancing experiences. Just ask for advice and get out there!

[Traction_man]

None have gone wrong, most can be planned/administered in a morning, and all have been thoroughly life enhancing experiences. Just ask for advice and get out there!

I am a bit of a train nerd so happy to forage about on National Rail web-site etc, and know a bit (through travelling and reading) about the TOCs and their stock and routes, but I guess a lot of folk pop along to TheTrainLine or whatever and search on that basis, I think the advice above to use TOC web-sites is very sound, but with lots of various TOCs sometimes on the same routes it gets complicated very quickly...

I was looking to go from Liverpool to Coventry combining train and cycling and using Merseyrail and London Northwestern trains for each leg (Liverpool--Chester train, Chester--Crewe bike, Crewe--Nuneaton train, Nuneaton--Coventry bike), rather than WCML Avanti services, not because of cost but because the former have a walk-on approach to carrying bikes rather than having to commit to a particular train and making a reservation. I prefer to have the flexibility, especially with a bike, with weather and fatigue requiring revising plans!

Generally doing rail journeys by using intra-regional services rather than the long-distance trains seems to be easier with bikes, at least in England.

What I do think would be useful, and if done worth pinning, would be a list of TOCs and their 'usability' for bikes, so examples where there are fewer restrictions and plenty of bike storage space would rate more highly (in my view) than those TOCs where reservations are mandatory and you need to hang your bike up in a wardrobe-sized cupboard!

The 'highest rated' bike-able TOCs might not be the fastest for journey time for a given route, but that'd be a compromise I'd be happy to live with.

Cheers,

Keith

[maximus meridius]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you work in the railway industry?

Secondly, how much do you think you would need to charge to stop people not using bike spaces they'd reserved? Probably about £30 I reckon, before anyone thought twice before boarding a train an hour earlier than they thought they were going to.

I don't know, which is what I said. As per my earlier thread, which some people got so enraged about, people have very different ideas as to what £30 (to use your figure) is worth to them. But of course it would depend on the length and time of the journey, just like ticket to ride prices.

My suggestion to charge, both for seat and for bike reservations, is based on several ideas:

1. To stop the idea of some service or other being a "free option". It changes the attitude, often regardless of the actual cost. 5p for a plastic supermarket bag is a tiny amount, compared to the shopping that goes in the bag. But when it was introduced the issuing of new plastic bags plummeted.

2. It gives the operator income for providing an extra service.

3. Users, either of reserved seats and especially of reserved bike spaces, would be a lot more justified in demanding a working reliable service. I've not read the small print, but can you ask for your ticket money back if you can't use the train because the bike space you've booked isn't available? Whereas if you'd paid for the bike space, they are more obliged to give you one.

Also, I've asked staff to cancel bike reservations, and I'm pretty certain they say "of course" and then don't do it. There's probably any number of innocent reasons why places aren't occupied and no practical way of avoiding them.

Of course they don't. It's an irrelevant free service that they don't really care about because they aren't getting paid for it. If customers paid for it the operators would have to try harder to make it work.

It's also a very "cycle holiday maker" point of view - many people use bikes on trains (even IC ones) for daily commutes to work and other life essential tasks. Doesn't really seem appropriate to price them off non-car travel, does it?

I wonder, did you read my post? Did you notice the section about my bike/train commute?

Thirdly, it always makes me sad to see people saying "oh, I'd love to do it but I'm worried/it's too hard" etc etc. I've done 4 or 5 long distance trips every year for the last 5 from Hertfordshire to points north. This is including the inner and outer Hebrides, various points along the NC500, many different locations in Northern England, and has involved a variety of train operators, buses and ferry companies. None have gone wrong, most can be planned/administered in a morning, and all have been thoroughly life enhancing experiences. Just ask for advice and get out there!

Maybe read the OP, and the many similar ones on this forum. Or perhaps the point just went right over your head.

I don't have to ask for advice on forums about how to drive to Newcastle. I don't have to ask for advice on forums about how to catch a train to Exeter. And as per my example of air travel, I don't even have to ask advice on forums about how to catch a plane, even as a beginner.

This isn't normal, having to find obscure forums (hint, the majority of the country don't know about this forum, it's not the whole world, you know) just to find out how to make a journey. That's my point.

PS. No doubt somebody will post links to lots of train travel, air travel, bus travel forums. Just to "prove" that these exist. Which will just demonstrate massive point-missing.

[Brianjeff50]

At the risk of being a stuck record. Were you using an app or the operators web site? Always use the web site for bike reservations.
I’ve just chosen three random days of Oban to Glasgow and everyday comes up with cycle spaces.
IMG_0175.jpeg
Similar with LNER
Maybe you chose the same day as everyone else.

I tried every system. The problem with the LNER app was that I could make a reservation but it gave me no proper record (like an E-ticket) just a reference number which I couldn’t double check.
I used Scotrail for the Oban train and it told me my desired train was fully booked; the ticket office disagreed and so did the reality of four empty slots.
As I said - it’s all daft!

[Paulatic]

[

I don't have to ask for advice on forums about how to drive to Newcastle. I don't have to ask for advice on forums about how to catch a train to Exeter. And as per my example of air travel, I don't even have to ask advice on forums about how to catch a plane, even as a beginner.

This isn't normal, having to find obscure forums (hint, the majority of the country don't know about this forum, it's not the whole world, you know) just to find out how to make a journey. That's my point.

PS. No doubt somebody will post links to lots of train travel, air travel, bus travel forums. Just to "prove" that these exist. Which will just demonstrate massive point-missing.

Someone taught you to drive and navigate. Let this man, not obscure, help you navigate. https://www.seat61.com/train-travel-in-britain.htm
I agree it could all be a lot simpler and I’m probably fortunate In never having had difficulty travelling by train with my bike.

[axel_knutt]

I don’t think train companies want bikes on their main line trains.

They just go through the motions in order to look willing, it would be their worst nightmare if it was convenient enough to attract cyclists in any numbers.

[nosmarbaj]

I don’t think train companies want bikes on their main line trains.

They just go through the motions in order to look willing, it would be their worst nightmare if it was convenient enough to attract cyclists in any numbers.

I am well aware that this has been said many, many times already:

Of course they don't want bikes, and one can't really blame them - they are private companies and they are incentivised to maximise profit. Bicycle accommodation costs money and takes up space that could be used for more seats. I could be wrong but I believe there is some condition of their franchises that they must offer cycle provision, so they do the minimum they can get away with. A nationalised network could be obliged to have decent cycle provision (which would of course require a govt. genuinely committed to active travel). I suppose a poor second would be some sort of direct subsidy - so much paid to the TOC per bicycle per kilometre.