THE outpouring of protest from travellers everywhere ("Rail chiefs under fire over decision to cut bike spaces", The Herald, March 29, and Letters, March 30 & April 1) exposes Abellio’s cack-handed decision to reduce luggage, pram and bike-carrying capacity on new and refurbished trains for the marketing incoherence it is.
We passengers travel with luggage, and as a cyclist, my luggage is my bike. To railways abroad, my bike and I constitute lucrative revenue stream. Only in Scotland are cyclists considered barely tolerated pests.
From 1989, when the present generation of utterly inadequate trains was foisted on Scotland, successive ScotRail managements have evoked “scorched earth hostility” towards carrying bikes on trains. Pressure eventually gained us four spaces from two on most trains, and six from two on trains plying the Galloway and West Highland routes.
Yet on some trains, the space available won’t even carry a nominal two, as I found on a train from Leuchars to Dundee in January.
Travel and tourism are major growth industries. New cycle routes open every year. More cyclists use more bikes. The number of bikes sold rises annually. Family cycling has seen a revolutionary increase. So on what proposition does Abellio base its act?
Since Abellio operates ScotRail as a taxpayer-funded organisation, we taxpayers have a right to know.
It’s nonsense that Abellio seeks to justify cutback in cycle space by claiming that cycle space reduction can somehow be mitigated by cyclists changing our behaviour by parking our bikes at one station and then hiring bikes at another.
That’s the equivalent of asking motorists to park at one pier, take a ferry, and hire a car at the other end.
The unspoken core of the problem is the quality of trains. The newest fleet entering service will be with us for another generation, during which huge bad grace will continue to curse Abellio and whoever is its franchise successor.
One of Abellio’s promises in gaining the ScotRail franchise was to make cycling more user-friendly. In producing these new trains, Abellio’s early act is to handicap itself and the cycling public in the carrying inadequacy of its trains.
One of the reasons First ScotRail lost the franchise in April last year was its crassness in customer relations. First ScotRail just didn’t care. Abellio adopts the same corporate behaviour, and doesn’t seem to care either.
Gordon Casely,
Westerton Cottage, Crathes, Kincardineshire.
I NOTE Abellio's decision to cut the number of bike spaces on its trains. I note several times a week travelling between Glasgow and Edinburgh that it is beyond Abellio's wit to have a catering trolley serve more than three coaches on a six coach train.
I would like therefore to suggest an innovative solution to both problems: more cyclists should be permitted on board, but in return they must agree to be supplied with overpriced tea, coffee and sugary confectionery, and serve it expeditiously to grateful passengers by pedalling the full length of the train.
It's a win-win. You're welcome.
Stephen Gold,
Braeton, Burnside Road,
Whitecraigs, Glasgow.
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