Bicycles and trains, 2007 vs 1955
This past Sunday, 17 June, the British Heart Foundation once again organized its yearly London to Brighton Bike Ride. It’s a charity ride: you sign up for a small fee, BHF uses that to organize the event, and you get friends and family to sponsor you, i.e. donate to the BHF. 27,000 people cycled from London to Brighton. All those people then have to get back to London — most of them don’t cycle back. Taking the train might be an obvious option. Surely there will be special train services for such a special event? Wrong. This is how First Capital Connect, the private rail company serving that route, handled the event, according to information on their website:
“The British Heart Foundation (BHF) is once again sponsoring this year’s London to Brighton bike ride.
The event will take place on Sunday 17 June. Unfortunately, First Capital Connect will not be carrying bicycles (including folding cycles) on any of its services on this day. This is because our trains do not have guard’s vans and capacity to cannot [sic] cater for the number of bicycles expected to travel. However, the BHF is making provision for the transportation of bicycles by road to the start line in London from Brighton, Haywards Heath and Crawley, and back from Brighton to Haywards Heath, Crawley, Coulsdon and Clapham Common at the end of the ride.
The BHF is accepting bookings for this service until 28th May. For more information on the BHF’s transportation service, please click here.”
Note that this means First Capital Connect did not carry any bicycles (including folders!) on any of its services on that Sunday, including for example London–Cambridge, going the opposite direction (looking for such a service was how Tony Raven, who posted this to uk.rec.cycling, found out about the no-bicycles policy).
Contrast this idea of service with this video, also linked in the uk.rec.cycling thread and originally posted in Brian Arner’s blog:
It’s all nice and well that BHF have organized transport back to London, if FCC don’t have the capacity. However, the video above clearly shows that it’s not a natural law that train companies don’t have this capacity. And if BHF have organized for the bulk of the riders to get back to London, it would have been a nice touch by FCC to carry those who maybe failed to book a seat in time (the BHF deadline being more than 2 weeks before the event). And what about cyclists out for a weekend ride who ended up in Brighton, who may have had nothing to do with the BHF ride? Or those innocently wishing to go to Cambrige? Moreover, the ban on folding bicycles is surely total nonsense — many suitcases are bigger than a folded Brompton. Why not just ban all luggage then?