Carriages for bikes could be on the way for some trains in Scotland

RichardD wrote:

(For Harrogate to London I'd do the Harrogate to Leeds part on the bike).

Fair comment.

I would have too only I had a huge rucksack full of gear for a week abroad. For the return journey I risked it deciding I would cycle it if there was no space for my bike on the train, but as it was there was. This was my road bike that I was using for the Etape du Tour, not a touring bike with racks and panniers. I've done plenty of that carrying camping gear etc, but my point is that this should not be an issue particularly from a rail company that states on its website:

Northern is strongly committed to promoting cycling as a sustainable and healthy means of transport that complements our train service. Our vision is to 'connect people to opportunities by the most sustainable means' and cycling has an important role to play.

They then go on to say:

We can only carry a maximum of two bikes per train but conductors have responsibility for the safety of their train and have the right to refuse entry if the train is busy.

In what way is that showing that they are "strongly committed to promoting cycling"?

Sorry for the rant but we live in a society that heavily subsidises private car usage (of which I am a beneficiary) but insists that trains should be private profit making concerns. 

iandusud wrote:

we live in a society that heavily subsidises private car usage (of which I am a beneficiary) but insists that trains should be private profit making concerns. 

Getting slightly off-topic but what do you mean by heavily subsidising car car use? Taxes on motoring raise over £30 billion per year. Only about a quarter is spent directly on roads (might have increased a bit the past couple of years but not hugely). There are other costs to motoring - pollution, congestion, etc. but other benefits too. Depends how you measure it. How are you measuring it?

Franchise-holders make a small percentage profit from their role in running trains but the overall cost of running the railways is based on a multi-billion annual public subsidy for less-used services and maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure.

Duncann wrote:

iandusud wrote:

we live in a society that heavily subsidises private car usage (of which I am a beneficiary) but insists that trains should be private profit making concerns. 

Getting slightly off-topic but what do you mean by heavily subsidising car car use? Taxes on motoring raise over £30 billion per year. Only about a quarter is spent directly on roads (might have increased a bit the past couple of years but not hugely). There are other costs to motoring - pollution, congestion, etc. but other benefits too. Depends how you measure it. How are you measuring it?

Franchise-holders make a small percentage profit from their role in running trains but the overall cost of running the railways is based on a multi-billion annual public subsidy for less-used services and maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure.

But what do you mean by ‘money spent on roads’?  You clearly are not including land rent, or, opportunity-cost of that land, in that figure.  So your figure is a huge underestimate.

Those roads sit on land, in urban areas (not so much in rural ones) very, very expensive land.  So giving it over to one group for their exclusive use (and in practice motorists get near-exclusive use of the roads as few people dare try to share it with them) carries a cost.  If you figure that cost in, I think it would dwarf the ‘money spent on roads’ in the form of maintenance costs.

This seems particularly glaring when considering the value of the roadspace used for storing cars, i.e. parking.  If any other group wanted to use that expensive urban land to store other private possessions they’d have to pay quite a lot.

The total taxes you refer to don’t pay for the other externalities, like pollution or health costs, never mind that land-use cost, even ignoring that, studies have found motorists to be substantially subsidised.

And you refer to ‘other benefits’, but what are those other unaccounted-for benefits (the equal inverse of the unaccounted-for costs like pollution and health and policing and disposing of abandoned vehicles etc)?

It seems to me that almost all other benefits are internalised, i.e. they accrue to those using the cars, not to third parties or society in general, and so are already factored in and are irrelevant to working out subsidies.

There is a counter-factor that seems an extremely difficult thing to work out - how much the possible productivity increase of someone driving somewhere rather than using a different mode of transport adds to wealth created and hence tax paid.  But, especially given how many journeys are entirely private and are not about commuting to work or anything else that generates income tax, plus the number that would be hardly any longer if cycled or using a train, it seems clear to me that drivers are subsidised substantially.

I'd agree this is a more critical issue with respect to urban driving than inter-city driving, though, so it seems to be more relevant when comparing cars and local commuter trains than with more long-distance travel.

Edit - oh, and I realise rail infrastructure also requires land.  But it's acknowledged that rail is subsidised, the point is so is driving and it is more so than modes that require far less expensive roadspace.

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

Duncann wrote:

iandusud wrote:

we live in a society that heavily subsidises private car usage (of which I am a beneficiary) but insists that trains should be private profit making concerns. 

Getting slightly off-topic but what do you mean by heavily subsidising car car use? Taxes on motoring raise over £30 billion per year. Only about a quarter is spent directly on roads (might have increased a bit the past couple of years but not hugely). There are other costs to motoring - pollution, congestion, etc. but other benefits too. Depends how you measure it. How are you measuring it?

Franchise-holders make a small percentage profit from their role in running trains but the overall cost of running the railways is based on a multi-billion annual public subsidy for less-used services and maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure.

But what do you mean by ‘money spent on roads’?  You clearly are not including land rent, or, opportunity-cost of that land, in that figure.  So your figure is a huge underestimate.

Please read what I wrote and please don't misrepresent what I said. 

iandusud wrote:

Virgin East Coast would allow me to book one of two places provided on the Leeds - London train (what a group of us wanted to do the journey?)

That's odd - the BR-era trains on that route actually have the equivalent of a guards' van, with racks for six bikes.

Might be that VTEC are preparing for the arrival of the new trains - I'm not sure how many spaces they will have but VTEC did remove the cycle space reservation function when they 'upgraded' their website last year. Ah, progress...