Train E-bike ban

[portals]

Trains need a paradigm shift for bike transport.

Imagine bike/ebike numbers for whatever reason suddenly rise, when it comes to trains then we're all stuffed, no space, stuck too far for range, walk of shame home.

All trains should have min1/2 carriage available for bikes, that would be a start.

 

[georgehenry]

I regularly take my 2015 Haibike Yamaha on local trains . I have had no issues accessing stations through manned barriers or from Guards on the trains. A few years ago I took my Oxygen Emate on a train into central London Waterloo terminus, and had no issues getting to London or travelling back from the same Waterloo station.

My local operator is South West Trains.

I use their trains probably every week.

The trouble is that lithium battery fires of all sorts, cars, buses, bikes, scooters etc have been reported enough for a knee jerk reaction to begin to gather momentum without too much understanding of how likely one is to occur.

A bike mechanic I know locally told me he had refused to work on a bike with an electric kit. It sounded like the customer wanted the bicycle bits to be serviced, not the electrical components. The bike mechanic sited battery fires as the reason he refused the job. It sounded simple to me for the bike to be looked at with the battery removed.

His response was certainly affected by the rather sensationalist coverage of electric bike fires.

Perhaps there needs to be a minimum standard for batteries and their chargers beneath which they cannot be sold.

Certainly a fire on a train can quickly become a very serious problem. Modern trains often have no windows or doors that can be opened and the emergency egress that a passenger might attempt to use can be prevented by The Driver with an over ride switch while the train is on the move. There are good reasons for this as stopping a train on fire has issues for the Driver who needs to avoid stopping the train in a tunnel, a cutting, on a bridge or under the canopy of a Station. Evacuating a train is also not straight forward as they are high of the ground and the crew need to block adjacent lines so that people getting out are not killed by passing trains and have the electrical supply to the third rail switched of so that people getting out are not killed by electric shock. Access by emergency services can also be very difficult.

 

[StuartsProjects]

I can see this possible ban spreading, remember its mostly private companies that run the railways and they will, probably reasonably, be looking to protect themselves against paying for insurance or meeting claims, if there were an accident.

Problem is there does not appear to be any form of co-ordinated review as to the exact nature of these heavily publicised eBike fires and its very easy for the un-knowledgable to assume the problem is eBikes in general rather than perhaps that great care needs to be taken with charging, and dare I say, building eBike batteries.

Central government are perhaps unlilkely to intervene and mandate that the private compainies that operate trains take a balanced approach to eBikes and must take account of an integrated transport policy where there are clear benefits of encouraging people to take to cycling or eBiking. It also seems unlikley to me that the private railway companies have any particular interest in promoting or encouraging cycling, quite the opposite I suspect.

You need to remember the motto of one political party;

Public owned utilities bad, lining our pockets good.

 

[matthewslack]

Although they do quote a maximum weight of 25kg and "Fatbikes" are not allowed due to their 2.5" tyre width restriction which is a shame as I was planning a few days cycling out and back from Corrour Station House and have a "Fatbike" specifically due to the terrain I hoped to ride across.

I had hoped for a car free trip by train but now I'm currently looking for car parking within a a full battery charge from the destination.

TTFN
John.

I wouldn't worry about the weight. My Ridgeback is over 26kg, but who would know, when its base weight has panniers etc added?

The tyre width restriction is due to the bike holders in the special carriage, which have a steel loop for the wheel to sit in.

I travelled Glasgow to Oban in the special carriage without my bike just over a week ago, and in the approx 16 bike spaces there were no bikes, so if you meet the usual excellent customer service from Scotrail which is the norm on the remote routes, chances are you'll be allowed in the ebike charging bay, perhaps with your front wheel secured by other means, or removed.

And yes, it has a dedicated socket for charging.

 

[portals]

I can see this possible ban spreading, remember its mostly private companies that run the railways and they will, probably reasonably, be looking to protect themselves against paying for insurance or meeting claims, if there were an accident.

Scotrail is owned by Scottish Government, given how f*cked they currently are and that they will all probably end up in jail I think ebikes on trains is probably way down their to-do list.

 

[portals]

A bike mechanic I know locally told me he had refused to work on a bike with an electric kit. It sounded like the customer wanted the bicycle bits to be serviced, not the electrical components. The bike mechanic sited battery fires as the reason he refused the job. It sounded simple to me for the bike to be looked at with the battery removed.

There are a few bike shops near where I live in Glasgow, it's luck of draw if you'll get a snotty wee d1ck or someone prepared to be helpful and I'm talking here about purely mechanical work, not e-related stuff.

Anytime I've dropped off bike to local guy who will help I've removed the battery, no battery = no fire, these guys should know that...

 

[portals]

I travelled Glasgow to Oban in the special carriage without my bike just over a week ago, and in the approx 16 bike spaces there were no bikes, so if you meet the usual excellent customer service from Scotrail which is the norm on the remote routes, chances are you'll be allowed in the ebike charging bay, perhaps with your front wheel secured by other means, or removed.

Space for 16 bikes? I've never seen room for any more than 4, what was the layout of the special carriage, is it designed for bikes?

 

[flecc]

A bike mechanic I know locally told me he had refused to work on a bike with an electric kit. It sounded like the customer wanted the bicycle bits to be serviced, not the electrical components. The bike mechanic sited battery fires as the reason he refused the job.

I've experienced just as bad, maybe worse hysteria.

Three days into driving my new e-car it informed me on the dash that my n/s front tyre was slowly losing pressure. Investigating revealed a thin nail into the tread. Leaving it in I popped into a local independent tyre service the next day, where they usually patch vulcanise a puncture internally.

But when they realised it was a fully electric car they refused to allow jacking it, even though I assured them I would jack it for them! As it was such a thin nail, to solve their problem they plugged it instead.

Apparently the boss knew of a case of jacking an e-car which had resulted in a huge bill for the damage caused. Possible of course since e-car batteries are underslung between the axles and jacking with battery cells between the jack and a 1.5 ton car doesn't do the cells much good.

Fortunately they've learned since, since when I popped in long after to get the tyres rotated they were quite happy to jack it at two suspension points each side.
.

 

[matthewslack]

Space for 16 bikes? I've never seen room for any more than 4, what was the layout of the special carriage, is it designed for bikes?

I should have taken pictures, but 8 hours in to the journey I was getting a bit lazy!

At least half the carriage is dedicated to bikes with pairs of places on each side plus a dedicated bay for the ebike charge point, and an empty space with a 'space for smaller bikes' sign.

ScotRail Highland Explorer

Our Highland Explorer carriages - which run on the West Highland Line - have been designed to support active travel, providing space and storage for bikes and other sporting gear.

www.scotrail.co.uk

 

[portals]

I should have taken pictures, but 8 hours in to the journey I was getting a bit lazy!

At least half the carriage is dedicated to bikes with pairs of places on each side plus a dedicated bay for the ebike charge point, and an empty space with a 'space for smaller bikes' sign.

ScotRail Highland Explorer

Our Highland Explorer carriages - which run on the West Highland Line - have been designed to support active travel, providing space and storage for bikes and other sporting gear.

www.scotrail.co.uk

Ah, OK, that's a special train for the West Highland Way, great idea, wish they would look closer to home though with number of bike spaces on the major commute routes they run (Glasgow-Edinburgh for example)

 

[cyclebuddy]

Ah, OK, that's a special train for the West Highland Way, great idea, wish they would look closer to home though with number of bike spaces on the major commute routes they run (Glasgow-Edinburgh for example)

Five class 153 trains converted with space for 20 bikes on each... intended for ski's and back-pack storage too depending on season... but the West Highland Line is very much a tourist route:



The reason train operators don't provide more bike capacity on normal trains is simply because (like buffets) it is for most of a trains working day a grossly underutilised space... more seats is what fare paying passengers ask for.

What you call an Inter7City (and I call a class 43 HST for those that travelled out of Aberdeen regularly in the late 1970's... and had their original Restaurant cars removed and converted to extra seating exactly for the reasons cited above), and travel between all 7 of Scotland's "cities" have 4 extra bike spaces newly added in addition to the two existing vertical spaces (Coach C):



Roger Smith who writes about this stuff said in April 2022:

"In 2015, there were 932 spaces for cycles on ScotRail trains., whereas now there are 1,406, with more to be provided this summer. Within the last few months, an extra 140 spaces have been installed across the fleet of 70 Class 385 electric trains.

All ScotRail trains now have spaces for bikes. By the end of August [2022], 100 more spaces will have been installed on the Inter7City trains, bringing the overall total to 1,506."

You can also "borrow" free Bromptons for 24hrs in Inverness, Oban and Elgin. You need to use the Brompton Hire app and apply code "Scotrail" apparently.

Seems to me like you've already got it pretty good... better than most parts of the country anyway.

EDIT: An afterthought: A typical rail carriage weighs around 100 tonnes (IIRC 105 tonnes for an HST/Inter7City). That's a lot of costly diesel being burned to haul non-earning dead weight around the wilds of Scotland if you're just going to dedicate space to (infrequently carried) bicycles. It's why the Inter7City trains were shortened from the original HST's 7, 8 or 9 carriages to just 4 in the first place, and now extended to 5.

 

[matthewslack]

I was quite impressed with most of my recent round trip from Oban to Bangor. Six journey legs of which four had reliably bookable bike spaces. The exception is Warrington to Bangor where some services do, and others don't. That far from both home and journey's end was a risk I couldn't afford, so the bike stayed at home and in one journey I used two forms of non-bike transport for the first time in nearly two years.

Door to door outward in the end took 20 hours, with a nearly 6 hour (!) connection in Glasgow, and return was a mere 13.5. The shortish links at either end take quite some time. For comparison, my riding time last year was about 40 hours over five days.

 

[guerney]

Now there is a thought, the Brompton has some big frame tubes, wonder if you could hide the electronics in them and use an external bagette battery ?

The EverBready™ is invented!

Bread with all it's tiny air pockets could be a bit too heat insulating? Bake in CPU heatsinks? They could be covered with discs of heat conductive silicone sheets painted to look like sliced boiled egg? Silicone tomatoes and onions could poke out from the sides.