Tyne & Wear Metro: I Throw My Cycling Gloves In Your Face.
We all know that bikes aren’t allowed on the Metro.
DB Regio & Nexus won’t even entertain a trial off-peak. In the absence of proper, hard empirical evidence, they must have done a whole bunch of risk assessments. In fact, I’ve put in a Freedom of Information Request for two of these, and I’m sure they’re even now being dispatched by courier.
But for now, this is a pipedream:
Bah!
The thing is, more and more people are questioning the need for the Metro in the first place. By the time you walk to the Metro station, faff around getting your ticket, wait for the train, zip into town, and then walk to your office, you’re probably better off just cycling. As Barry Bell commented on the Twitter:
It’s a bit like the tortoise and the hare. On the face of it the Metro “journey” is really quick. But with all the messing about you have to do at each end of the “journey”, you’d be better off opting for a slower form of transport that takes you door-to-door with minimal stops in between.
In fact, I reckon this might be the case for the WHOLE of Tyne & Wear Metro’s network.
So here’s my challenge to you, Metro:
I’ll race you door-to-door for any journey on your network.
The winner gets to decide whether or not bikes are allowed on your trains…
Its like this with the buses in Southampton. They’ve become quite unreliable on certain routes so the bike is both easier and quicker most of the time.
What I don’t get about this, is that DB allow bikes on almost all trains and S-Bahn (similar to metro) trains in Germany, and in most cities bikes are allowed on light rail (somewhat smaller than Metro) transport off peak. Even my Xtracycle is allowed on the tram off peak, which is a lot narrower than Metro rtrains.
DB don’t need any risk assesment studies: they have all the empirical evidence they need from many years of transporting bikes ion trains.
These companies need government to *force* them to carry bikes. Otherwise, they’re not going to give up seats that could be occupied by paying customers. Sadly, our government doesn’t give a toss, and nor do councils, hence the patchwork of grudging acceptance of bike carriage, through to pointless, logic free point blank refusal that characterises Britain’s public transport network.
I just wanna see their “customer research” mentioned
here in 2005 (referring to research in 2004/5)
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6783/is_2005_March_22/ai_n28262866/
and here, and is he referring to the same research? Who knows.
http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2012/02/09/metro-bosses-urged-to-let-bikes-on-board-by-newcastle-cycling-campaign-61634-30295137/
It’s soooo silly!
Karl, have you put in an FoI for this/these research reports?
Compilation of the Bike-Metro saga here http://newcycling.blogspot.com/p/nexus-bikes-on-metro.html
Katsdekker, from the way the research is mentioned in the first article, there appears to be one major flaw in the research. The people questioned were existing Metro passengers, which does not provide a good sample for the research. A random sample of people in Tyne and Wear would be a better way of finding out people’s thoughts on letting bikes on the metro.
The current research basically proves that people in a certain position don’t want changes that may inconvienience them. For example we asked a sample of billionaires if they wanted to be taxed more, most of them said no.
Unfortunatley for NEXUS, Metro and DB Regio, they are missing all the potential customers/passengers that may be intertested in taking their bike on the metro.
As for Karl’s post, I agree. Even going at a nice steady pace across Newcastle, I can complete my journey in roughly the same time as the Metro, plus my bike is less likely to have problems that completly dirsupt my journey (I have not yet heard of any brake cable thefts). But on the bike I dont quite get that same initimate feeling of being crammed in to a tin can, and being rubbed up against sweaty strangers.
“I’ll race you door-to-door for any journey on your network.”
Phew. I thought you were going to volunteer *me* for that!
;o)
I DID mean you. It’s good of you to volunteer.
But don’t worry - we know that Tyne & Wear Metro is chicken, and would never agree to such a race: a) On “health and safety” grounds. b) Because they know they’d lose.
The Clieent for T&W metro is Nexus - Nexus is not DB. I’d suggest that Whitley Bay to Manors is perhaps a bit quicker & nicer on the Metro, as is a trip to Sunderland.
Outside peak hours and outside the city core there is plenty of capacity. the late Peter Huntley former MD of Go Northeast, and Wayne Hemingway provided 2 high profile rider chucking-off stories, reporting that the trains they were trying to use were practically empty.
The key detail is when a major benefit links with a clear public desire to enjoy that benefit. It has happened for cycling in London and could also happen on Tyneside. I predict it will happen if the 30 minute wait to catch a tube service hits with the Olympics - within a week - two at most the London rail termini will be packed with deep stacks of commuter bikes as the public at large act to solve the problem if the London 2012 team fail to deliver a workable operation.