I can’t believe this discussion. Are people really defending the practice of leaving bikes in silly places thus creating an obstacle course for passengers? What a ludicrous position to take.
Anyone who doesn’t know where to put their bike on a train could always ask a member of staff or, if there’s no opportunity to do that, just make sure it’s not in anyone’s way. It’s called courtesy.
Bletchleyite’s example of someone causing an obstruction despite having been told where the bike area is is appallingly inconsiderate and demonstrates the sort of “I’m alright Jack, sod everyone else” attitude that increasingly affects our society.
The problem is made worse by the lack of good cycle parking at stations, often there's not enough of it, as well as the cuts to local buses (either causing more people to use the train and/or causing more people to need to cycle at each end).
What is needed is a review of every station and whether there's a need for more cycle provision more cycle provision is provided. This should fully accord with all the guidance laid out in the ATOC's cycle toolkit, which defines the size of each space, what is considered not enough and the amount of extra provision to be provided.
In addition to this there should be a lot more capacity provided on the rail network, these sorts of problems will only get worse and more frequent is schemes like HS2, Crossrail 2, etc. aren't implemented.
There should be a standard set of rules for cyclists which every TOC signs up to. This should include separate cycle and disabled spaces, if the trains aren't big enough to provide this then they should be bigger or have clear rules about the carriage of cycles within the doorway areas (including none in the doorways used to access disabled spaces and only if there isn't a buggy in the doorway).
To have a cycle ban at any given station requires there to be cycle provision of a minimum of 10 spaces or 1% of the daily passenger flow (assumed to be 1/365th of the annual entry/exits for the station) whichever is the higher. Unless it's a rural station then this should be 10 spaces or 2% unless there's at least a half hourly bus service, where the provision is as above. Even then every 2 years the provision of cycle parking should be checked and increased as required.
As required cycle parking should be at the expense of car parking spaces (you can park a lot more cycles in the land required to park a car and by the time you are looking at the loss of 4 car parking spaces the area could be as large as 11mx10m or 16mx5m which can house quite a lot of cycles of it can be provided at the end of a parking run, especially if you use double hight stackers), as although a car would be paying for the space which may bring on revenue of £5-£15 per space per day, the cyclists could be buying more train tickets which could easily be £10 per cyclist, meaning you'd only need two to cover the loss from the parking.
Do this and threads like this would be a lot less common and you'd probably see a lot more people using the trains as the combination of cycling and train would be viable, as well as being fairly confident that you can undertake your required journey (even if that's you are sure of finding a cycle parking space).
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