Ah yes, a return to the road.cc live blog for the infamous bike lockers…
(CyclingMikey/Twitter)
They will be familiar to any of you who have tried to take your bike on a journey longer than a local train journey in the UK. The saga begins long before you set foot on a platform, as you have to reserve one of the inevitably few seats available. Then, on the day of the journey, find your locker and begin the ‘fun’ game of hoisting your bike into the required upright position. Feeling relatively strong and travelling on a fairly light road bike with narrow tyres and handlebars? Well, you might get through this experience relatively hate-free. If not, then I wish you luck.
Wider handlebars, wider tires, bags, or simply a heavier bike can make this a physically and mentally taxing effort that leaves you feeling like you really should have been given an Olympic medal for your efforts. Road safety activist and camera cyclist CyclingMikey learned the hard way when he told his followers online that he wanted to “express my deep disgust that a designer/planner thought this was in any way acceptable bike storage,” and subsequently labeled them “disgraceful, stupid little cabinets.”
> “If you want to get more people to give up their cars, you have to offer more”: Railway companies are criticised for banning bicycles during rush hours, cyclists describe the policy as a “step backwards”
One follower commented: “Totally crazy. I’ve just returned from a cycling trip through France that lasted several weeks and although the railway is heavily criticized, there are enough spaces for bicycles in every TER carriage and enough room for touring bikes and special bikes.”
Paul Tutton added: “It’s almost as if they designed them to stop people taking bikes on trains while keeping their legal obligations to the absolute minimum.”
The whole issue of poor bike parking on trains has been around for some time. Cycling UK commented in 2019 on the “terrible” bike parking on GWR high-speed trains.
> Trying to take a very expensive bike on a GWR train is hard work
Last year we spoke to railway engineer Gareth Dennis on the road.cc podcast. In this episode he told us why it is so inconvenient to take your bike on the train…
“Vertical storage should be banned altogether,” he argued unequivocally. “For the middle-aged men in Lycra with their very expensive racing bikes – and that’s basically all vertical storage is for – vertical storage is ruining their bike.”
“For everyone else – and we shouldn’t be designing for this narrow case anyway – how does it work for most people who can’t lift their bike? What about people who rely on their bike as a mobility aid? What about less confident cyclists who want a bigger, sturdier bike? What about people with non-standard bikes, tricycles, ones with wheelchair suspension, longer bikes, tandems?
“How can these people use vertical storage? They can’t. This is what is locking people out of using the railway. The structure of our railways and ultimately the Minister of Transport are denying them freedom of movement.”
