With attention focused on bike hire schemes following London’s launch of its fleet of ‘Boris Bikes’, ATOC, the Association of Train Operating Companies, is conducting a nationwide survey to gauge the levels of interest in hiring bicycles at railway stations throughout the UK.
The survey, which can be found here, requires no registration and only takes a couple of minutes to complete. Questions are focused around how often and for what purpose you use the train, and in particular, how you reach your eventual destination after the end of the train journey, and how much you would be prepared to pay to hire a bike to complete it.
In recent months, ATOC has been compiling case studies and talking to stakeholders about railway station-linked cycle hire schemes, and the survey will allow it to get the views of as many cyclists and rail passengers as possible.
1 thought on “ATOC surveys rail passengers for cycle hire demand throughout UK”
I’d rather they brought back
I’d rather they brought back proper guards vans that could take a dozen bikes. Instead, on modern British trains, we get small, badly designed cycle spaces, at best capable of taking three bikes, but are usually full of either luggage or refreshments trolleys. There is a huge potential market for mixed-mode cycling and train commuting. In some places it is worth dedicating entire carriages to bicycles. They could start by giving us the ability to book space for your bicycle online, at the same time as buying a ticket. But with short operating contracts, and shareholder dividends to pay, I’m sure a few token bike hire stations are a better bet for the train operating companies. They could even use them as an excuse to ban bikes from trains all together, and have more space for selling dry sandwiches and instant coffee at hugely inflated prices.