Unlit cyclists: maybe safer!

[Ben Lovejoy]

Very few people buy walk-on fares for longer journeys. The true comparison (and it would be interesting to see if anyone has verifiable figures) would be booking a week or two ahead.

Meantime, back at cycle lighting, I did a little survey last night. I passed 11 cyclists, 10 of whom were lit (though one very poorly), 1 was unlit (a kid).

Be interesting for a bunch of us here to do the same so we have at least a little data to work with.

Ben

[glueman]

Very few people buy walk-on fares for longer journeys.

Absolutely, because they are so damned expensive! The internet wasn't around and even phone booking was a rarity in the 70s - mostly, you just went to the station and got on a train. Saver returns (any train but Friday evening rush hour usually) were the norm. If passengers have to plan ahead there's a reasonable chance they'll find other means of transport if available. Only London arrivals see train as the principal route in.

I can't begin to imagine how someone would plan a rail journey with a bike from say, Edinburgh to mid-Wales.

[Ben Lovejoy]

I bought my tickets in advance then and do now. In the old days, it was calling in at the station to do it, now it's online.

[drossall]

I passed 11 cyclists, 10 of whom were lit, 1 was unlit

Sorry, read that (with some surprise) as ..."I was unlit".

[Ben Lovejoy]

I passed 11 cyclists, 10 of whom were lit, 1 was unlit

Sorry, read that (with some surprise) as ..."I was unlit".

Hehe - I'd have been in some trouble if that were the case as I was in the car at the time.

[CJ]

Very few people buy walk-on fares for longer journeys. The true comparison (and it would be interesting to see if anyone has verifiable figures) would be booking a week or two ahead.

Sorry to persist with the off topic strand, but properly representative figures, i.e. a typical mix of walk-on and discounted fares, are compiled in the retail prices index. And this data is the source of answers to parliamentary questions, such as that given by Charlotte Atkins to Norman Baker on the 21st Feb 2005.

To save you looking it up in Hansard), Ms Atkins admitted that between 1975 and 2004, the true cost of rail travel increased by 70% whilst that of motoring fell by 11%.

[Ben Lovejoy]

Thanks for the figures, Chris: I stand corrected.

Ben

[tb]

today I rode to work Epsom to Brentford leaving 06.25, and return home leaving 19.30. Both journeys in the dark.
If I had ridden without (good) lights today I would either be seriously injured or dead.
no question.

[Sares]

I can't begin to imagine how someone would plan a rail journey with a bike from say, Edinburgh to mid-Wales.

Sorry this is off-topic, but to reassure Glueman, simply go to your nearest station (in advance) and get the person at the counter to arrange the tickets and bike reservations for you, or book by phone, or book online for you and bike, any route, at http://www.nationalexpresseastcoast.com/ . You'll get a remarkable stack of tickets (think deck of cards) but I've been all over the UK this way, and it's well possible. Do book in advance to make sure you get the bike reservations you want. Ask the platform staff which part of the train to get on.

[glueman]

Thing is Sares, if I want to travel to London I can pay anything from £22 return - two £11 singles - to about 300 quid return, probably more. The cheap tickets are simply bait. They are taken, if they ever existed, the full three months ahead; the maximum the regulatory authorities allow.

From then on it's an ever increasing scale. This is morally suspect for a national transport mode. Sure, I can see the point in demanding a premium for rush hour trains, Friday evenings and so on as they used to be, but is there any point in charging a passenger a high rate simply because they can only book two days ahead?
It's what happens when you try to pay shareholders a fat dividend while maintaining track, buying new trains and supporting the infrastructure. If I did go to the station for our imaginary trip from Scotland to Wales I suspect I'd have to pay through the nose for the privilege.

[Sares]

Glueman,

True, if you want to travel to London, you will pay lots for it, but travelling to less popular destinations makes it much easier to get the cheap tickets. Unfortunately the national rail website is down just now, as I was going to search for a fare for you (to see how much from Glasgow to Machynlleth would be), but it wouldn't be £300.

Saver returns are still widely available to walk up and buy that day, for trains after 9am. With a bike takes more planning because you often need reservations, but without it's quite easy. While there are all sorts of criticisms that could be applied to the train system, I think you're being overly pessimistic. National Rail is not Ryanair.

[glueman]

It's not all bad I agree. You can buy a West Yorkshire Day Rover for £4.50 after 9.30 and traverse a large area with a bike that adds variety to cycling but the London tickets are a con.
Looking through a varity of sources like Martin's money saver forum, traintimes.org, the TrainLine as well as National Rail Enquiries the complexity and range of prices is just absurd, it bears little relationship to demand, is full of clauses and hurdles and anyone with a car will be reaching for the keys after five minutes online. I just don't think you should need internet bargaining expertise to travel in a way that's been established for the last 150 years.
Railcards add to the idea of a bargain whereas they are mostly the traditional ticket value with non-card holders fleeced extra. Reductions apply for young people and their guardians looking at wildlife (!) to money off for visiting the terracota army. It's crackers.

[thirdcrank]

Looking at it from a cyclist's point of view, lit or unlit, you want reliability / dependability and at a reasonable price. You shoudn't have to plane ages ahead either or be forced to tackle obstructive staff. (Or have to even worry about these.) The decision whether to cycle or try to take the bike on transport can be caused by the unexpected such as bad weather or tiredness.

Looking at it from the transport operators' point of view (and this applies to road as well as rail public transport) if your main business is subsidy harvesting, you don't really want passengers, and certainly not if they are taking up room with bikes.

So, roof-rack cycling flourishes.

[andwags]

There is a very good possibility that higher percentage of total cyclists now use lights that are also messing up the results of the stats. I see very few people riding bikes at night now without lights. If 99% of cyclists use lights then unlit cyclists doing similar routes and mileage are in more accidents. I am not saying this is the case but it's a possibility.

[pete75]

I thought it better to make this reply a new topic, rather than send Cyclist Killed off topic. It's about a study by West Sussex Police of all reported cycling accidents reported to them over a three year period in the 1980s, which found that only 10% of nocturnally injured riders were unlit.

If we suppose that more than 10% of cyclists were unlit, the inescapable but counter-intuitive conclusion is that it's safer like that!

Drunk drivers are involved in about 10% of accidents. Using the logic outlined aboved then drunken drivers are safer than sober ones.