OldGreyBeard wrote: I would dearly love to see far far fewer cars on the road.
And you think the best way of doing that is to make cycling more expensive?
I don't own a car, yet the tax taken from the money I have to work to get is used to subsidise those people who get in their little tin boxes and drive ridiculously short distances*, clogging up the roads I have to use and polluting the air I have to breathe.
Why should I then have to pay more to not clog the road and pollute the atmosphere?
As for cycle parking at stations, that is a matter for Network Rail and the train operating companies. If they want to provide it for free (which they don't round here - they don't provide it at all) that's up to them.
*Something like 80% of all car journeys in England and Wales are under 3 miles!