RE: https://social.notjustbikes.com/@notjustbikes/117031622101246791
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If you read my posts as "we should ban all bikes on trains" then you have problems with reading comprehension.
Yes, you should BE ABLE to take a bicycle on a train sometimes.
That is totally different than "train companies should encourage people to take their bicycles on trains and add extra bike carriages to their trains."
It should be POSSIBLE to bring a bike on a train but a) it should not be encouraged & b) there should be an extra charge to account for the space taken up by the bike.
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@notjustbikes I don't understand, though. Why should it not be encouraged? Why should there be an extra charge? The marginal cost of adding an extra train car or even an extra train is likely not exhorbitant and carries additional benefits.
Furthermore, I doubt there will ever really be *that many people* who want to bother with taking a bicycle on a train.
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@gcvsa @notjustbikes @ati1 the marginal cost of adding an extra car could be very low, or it could be extremely high, depending on whether the trains that are running are already at the maximum length for the stations they serve.
And adding one extra train may be extremely expensive when an area is already running at capacity.
And anyway it would be one less extra car / train for other passengers.
Of course it depends on the time of the day: on the commuters' trains around Milan bicycles are usually allowed, trains have room for them etc. and usually are not an issue, but they are not allowed during rush hour, when close to Milan trains tend to be already filled to the brim with standing people. (and of course at that hour the system in that area is already running at capacity, with trains that are as long as possible and as frequent as possibile)
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@valhalla @notjustbikes @gcvsa My point is if for whatever reason we cannot carry bikes on trains -we should do whatever is needed to be able to carry bikes on trains. Alternative is not bike on trais ban = 0 cost cos rail industry doesn't see it and everybody happy. Alternative is people using cars to carry bikes which always means much greater cost + long list of disfunctions for everyone: infra cost, security (funding dictatorships with oil money), roads, parking space, disfunctional cities..
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@ati1 @gcvsa @notjustbikes not really: when also the car infrastructure is basically at capacity (which is the case for the area I'm thinking about) the alternative is people considering whether they *really* need to do that trip, and possibly deciding that they don't, which is the best outcome -
@notjustbikes @gcvsa @ati1 (or possibly deciding that they can do the trip at a different time when transport systems aren't overloaded, that's also good) -
@valhalla @notjustbikes @gcvsa Lesson learned from polish transformation in last 30 years is opposite. When public transport from socialist era started to wind down people immediatelly switched to cars. That resulted in close to 20million cars per less than 40 million people, massive infrastructure investments forced by those people on politicians, spreading of cities, cars parked everywhere and people not even willing to use new public transport built 30yrs later cos they already have cars
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@ati1 @gcvsa @notjustbikes yeah, but there the car infrastructure wasn't already at capacity, there was room to expand it, and that's what people did
the places I'm thinking about have both train and car infrastructure at capacity, and no room to expand either¹, because there is also a housing crisis, and space to build anything is frigging expensive.
and you can't just add another car to a train when the train is already as long as the station, and on either side of the station you already have tall-ish apartment blocks that prevent any expansion (and if you could, it should be for people, not for bikes).
¹ in the area where the congestion is. they have tried to build more car infrastructure just outside of it, where land is cheaper and less developed, to try and reduce the congestion from people who didn't really need to go through the congested point but around it, but it didn't really work.
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@notjustbikes @gcvsa @ati1 (admittedly, they have also built new train infrastructure in the last 20 years or so, but they did it by digging it underground, and that's way more expensive) -
@valhalla @notjustbikes @gcvsa Ok I have an impression we re talking different things. I mean general approach and you seem to be talking about some very specific mega city case that does not represent general country wide or even continent wide transport challenges. I saw you saying "rail should not move peoples bikes" and you maybe meant "rail should not move peoples bikes in downtown LA/London/Paris" etc ...
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@ati1 @gcvsa @notjustbikes I'm saying that whenever people can't just hop on the train with a bike and find place for it, it's probably not cheap nor easy to find a solution.
while on the places where it would be easy, there is probably no need to find a solution to a problem that is not there in the first place.
and yes, the case where there is this problem tend to be at least small cities (the place I know more of is in Italy, we don't have *mega* cities here)
