Crush-loading and bicycles on the Elizabeth line

[Jonny]

So we are cutting services and train lengths because of a lack of demand whilst trains are overcrowded and there is absolutely no space for bikes.

Doesn’t quite add up does it.

The problem is the political optics with the geographical distribution of the passenger numbers recovery - cuts "up north" while London gets boosted. In my recent experiences (a Northerner, but doing a lot of journeys on London trains (mostly LU but some other TfL), London trains are quite busy whereas my limited 'up north' journey experiences have been mixed. Except maybe for "all seated" after a cancellation being the busiest so far.

 

[Benjwri]

Where BTW there certainly should be adequate, safe and covered bike storage space.

Living just past Reading this is most definitely not true, unless you count a curved piece of plastic and some metal poles as safe. Having seen multiple bikes stolen, once even with someone riding it, I barely want to take my bike to the station, let alone leave it there, locked or not.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Living just past Reading this is most definitely not true, unless you count a curved piece of plastic and some metal poles as safe. Having seen multiple bikes stolen, once even with someone riding it, I barely want to take my bike to the station, let alone leave it there, locked or not.

I wonder how many cyclists would happily pay for a staffed secure cycle storage facility, and would it be enough to make one viable at major stations like Reading? I would.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Where BTW there certainly should be adequate, safe and covered bike storage space.

There should be. But 90% of the time there isn't. I absolutely don't blame anyone for not wanting to leave a bike locked up against an uncovered, unsurveilled (either by staff or by CCTV), insecure metal post. Most of the time doing so is essentially just asking for it to be stolen.

 

[Malaxa]

Er, getting back to the Elizabeth Line, there is no evidence adduced by the OP that these alleged miscreants are actually commuters. It would be a risky commute when the carriage of an accompanie bicycle could be prevented on the perfectly understable order of station staff. A commuter tends to do the same journey day after day, or certainly regularly, at roughly the same time.

 

[AlastairFraser]

I wonder how many cyclists would happily pay for a staffed secure cycle storage facility, and would it be enough to make one viable at major stations like Reading? I would.

Reading already has a large secure cycle storage on the Station North side. It's rare I go down nowadays to my hometown, but cycle storage seems to be popping all over the town.
Partly because of the half decent off-road cycle network and partly because of the Detroit-style levels of bike theft in Reading.
But it's further down the line in places like Maidenhead where bike storage will be an issue.

 

[JGurney]

Is it not somewhat incredible that a new railway does not have the capacity to accomodate cyclists at all times?

In the context of London region commuter services, it is just not practical, short of major network capacity improvements. While there has been a small drop in peak passengers compared with pre-covid, it is not enough of a drop to leave sufficient space on trains to accommodate a substantial number of cycles at peak hours. There are also the problems of platform capacity and station dwell times. A lot of passengers with cycles would take up a lot of platform space and would be a hazard, especially at stations without step-free access if it meant a number of people carrying bikes up or down busy stairways. Having a number of passengers with cycles boarding or alighting (or both at the same door!) would affect dwell times and therefore reliability and so the number of trains which could use the line per hour.

Part of the issue is that demand for cycle carriage is too high to meet with any currently practical measures, but too low to support really innovative solutions such as dedicated Motorail-like 'pedalorail' trains, aimed mainly at carrying commuter cyclists and their machines. Such trains could in theory run from fairly quite outer-suburban origins where there was time and room to load them to destinations on the fringe of the city centre as opposed to the big termini, from where the commuters dispersed to their final destinations. The issues with that are three: probably not enough demand to justify them, not enough capacity for the additional trains, and no remaining quiet stations on the centre fringe. If Kensington Olympia still handled about eight trains per day as it once did, then a peak-hour 'pedalorail' service from places like all stops from Shepperton to Teddington, or from Hampton Court, Thames Ditton and Berrylands, then non-stop to Olympia might have had a role if the paths and vehicles were available. (But perhaps this really belongs in the 'Speculative discussion' thread).