Cycling UK Forum

I was told this week by southern manager that the change was in response to customer complaints about folding bike owners.

Unfortunately there are a few inconsiderate folk out there

If anyone is still listening to this thread, as of yesterday Southern started enforcing this policy (making you carry the bike from the ticket gates). South Eastern has been enforcing it for some time.

Anyone bothered enough to do anything about it? I'm pretty peeved. I spoke to a manager at London Bridge yesterday but they were not listening. You mention the health and safety issue and they think it's a wind-up.

No manager this morning at the time I came through London Bridge, but the gate staff explained why only some gates at that station were doing this. Some gates are managed by Southern (platforms 8+) and others by South Eastern. It's the South Eastern management that have asked their gate staff to do this, and not Southern.

The problem here is not about the folding policy but about the heavy-handed way it's being enforced at certain gates by certain staff. I am worried that this is some sort of trial and if they think it works they will extend this behavior to all stations and all gates. I will try and talk to someone at my station to find out more.

My train company has a long history of heavy-handedness towards cyclists. When they first introduced the ban (6-7 years ago I think) they hired lots of huge security guards, dressed in black and not in the train uniform, to stop cyclists getting on to the platform without their bikes folded. But after a time they started letting us wheel our bikes down the platform again. A couple of years ago Brighton station re-introduced this interpretation of the rules and were making us fold at the gates. I was manhandled by one staff member at one point when I unfolded my bike beyond the gate to make the long walk to the train.

I think we are protected by law here. My understanding is this. The 'Health and Safety' law says that employers can't make their staff carry more than 10kg single-handedly. Then there's a 'duty of care' law that extends the health and safety laws to customers on the company premises. So this means, I think, that the train companies are breaking these laws by making us carry our bikes a long way. This law will only apply when your folding bike can't practically be wheeled when it's folded, which is most of them.

We shouldn't have to resort to laws though to get the train companies to stop this behaviour. The ticket gates need to be kept free and flowing at peak times. Having us fold our bikes at that point gets in peoples way and will be annoying other customers. They should trust us to fold our bikes when we need to just before we board the train.

It's worth reminding ourselves of why we have the bike ban. Ultimately it's needed because many of the train lines are full to capacity - they are pushing as many trains through as they can, and so they need to pack us in like sardines at peak times. Allowing full-size bikes on trains would mean they can't pack as many customers in, and when you have the doorway full of passengers crammed together, getting a bike through is sometimes very difficult and before the ban some customers complained about the bikes. Around the same time as the ban came in, new carriages came in that didn't have the large cattle-wagon areas for bikes. But at the heart of the problem I think is capacity on the lines, such as old tunnels with only 1 line each way which would have required both forward thinking and lots of investment to be expanded at the right time. So as long as when we are on the train our bikes are folded and we are considerate to other passengers, there should not be a problem.

What we need is a good negotiator to talk this through with the train companies and persuade them to apply the bike ban a different way, and to treat us like the sensible adults that most of us are. It would help if they were consistent between stations, gates, and over time so we know where we stand.

Last time this happened I went to my local MP, he wrote a letter to the train management, and soon after they stopped making us carry the bikes. So there's hope we can do the same this time. We do need to act though.

N.B. while there is a history of aggression towards cyclists from the train companies, there is also a history of aggression the other way which does not help matters. We need the train management to have some empathy towards those cyclists who have difficulty carrying their bikes, so we need to treat the train staff and management with the same respect we'd like them to show towards us.

So if this affects you, please go and talk rationally to a train manager today.

This just happened to me. It's happened to me the last couple of weeks when I enter London Bridge ticket barriers for platforms 1-6 but not the gates for platforms 8+. I folded the bike to get through the barriers, then when I folded it up again to wheel it to the platform I was blocked by a manager and a policewoman.

I'm extremely peeved about it as my folding bike is both heavy and does not wheel when folded. And I do genuinely have a very sore lower back that doesn't take kindly to me carrying my bike. I've heard of some people (women with Bromptons) in tears over this.

It's not a new policy - this policy came in a few years ago, with most train companies around the same time. The policy is that you must only carry folded bikes on the trains (not the station and platform) however the interpretation of the rule has been very inconsistent over the years. Those posters look like the same ones they put out a few years back. Check the wording - it says trains not platforms. Recently they have been getting lenient and I've seen more and more full-size bikes on the peak-time trains. So the policy has not been enforced so well lately and perhaps this new enforcement approach is a backlash to that. Looks like only certain gate-staff have been following a stricter interpretation of the rules.

I think the reason they want to make us fold our bikes at the gates is because they want to avoid conflict on the trains, where the conductor is on their own and can't do much if a cyclist refuses to fold their bike, or don't want to have to chuck someone off for having a full-size bike. It doesn't work of course, but at least it proves that our bikes can fold and the barrier provides an easy enforcement point with police and managers around for backup if they get any agro (like they did from me today - but only because I was seconds from missing my train, otherwise I would have preferred to talk it through with them).