FGW forced to refute claims that bikes will be banned on trains from next year

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the road.cc website:

First Great Western forced to refute claims that bikes will be banned on trains from next year
Spokeswoman responds to 'rumours' that no bikes will be carried from 2015

First Great Western has refuted claims that it is to ban all bikes from its trains from next year.

Rumours had been circulating that from January 1, 2015, no more bikes would be carried on any services.

Philip Hoare wrote in the Independent this week: :Yesterday in Brockenhurst, the railway station close to the site of the accident, I was trying to get my bike on the train back to Southampton.

^The two cyclists in front of me could make no headway, as the limited bike space was occupied by a woman and her pushchair. "What am I supposed to do?" she complained.

"A pair of onlookers to this confrontation ^ repeated, I^ll wager, in train carriages many times that day ^ noted that they^d witnessed a similar altercation on another train that week, which was brought to a conclusion by the guard informing the riders that First Great Western were about to ban all bikes on their trains from the first of January.^

But when road.cc contacted First Great Western for comment, a spokeswoman answered: ^That^s all they are - rumours. There are no plans to change the current bicycle policy.^

When road.cc went online to check the terms of the current bicycle policy however, the webpage was down.

[ChrisB]

Eh? FGW^▸ (First Great Western). Don't serve the line through Brockenhurst! Did the magazine think to ask the provider that does maybe? Nah...too hard & might spoil a goid story!

[TaplowGreen]

I think bikes are OK if they can go in the Guards van, and folding "Brompton" bikes are no problem either (except for the idiots who ride them along the platforms), but on peak LTV^▸ (London [and] Thames Valley) Turbo trains the ban is effectively meaningless as its never enforced.

Quite common to see vestibules blocked by full size bikes on peak Reading-Paddington services despite the signage telling people its not allowed.

I speak as a cyclist myself but sometimes it's very irritating as they can be very selfish, with a rather superior attitude if challenged.

End of the day, these trains were designed to carry people around?

[paul7575]

Eh? FGW^▸ (First Great Western). Don't serve the line through Brockenhurst! Did the magazine think to ask the provider that does maybe? Nah...too hard & might spoil a goid story!

Read it again perhaps.  He's saying that while he was boarding a train at Brockenhurst, he heard a conversation about an incident on another (presumably FGW) train.

Paul

[didcotdean]

Bikes do get piled against the doors which is all very well until you get to a station where those doors are in use (platform 5 at Didcot is a good example of this). The owners of the bikes are often unknown at this point, sat in the middle of the carriage.

[NickB]

IMO^▸ ('in my opinion') - If platform staff enforced the rules that already exist around no bikes on certain services then there would be little need for a blanket ban.