Need a parking spot on 29th.May within 5 miles of Whitehall.

Don't understand the appeal of riding in or around London at all unless you have to. The rest of the country is a shitload nicer, even with all those Brexit voters.

convince everyone in extended family, relatives etc to vote green

Unless they're campaign against LTN's 😂

More closed road events around the UK sounds like a great solution

Like @fredtc also don't drive so when I want to cycle around the country it's a huge fucking pain in the ass. Uusually you have to book train spaces via the rail franchise's twitter account which is doubly annoying because twitter is cesspit. 2 spaces per train! If you have to change trains that's four fucking reserved spaces for one bike ride and return journey. I have a friend in the transport game and apparently it's been put to National Rail to increase bike spaces on trains for years and years and they consistently decline to implement increased space.

Driving is bad, and there are often alternatives to doing so, but let's not pretend that the UK offers appropriate, reliable, or in any way reasonable bike accomdation on trains. That people choose cars over trains is not down to laziness but sensibility and flexibilty because the base train offering is inherently inadequate. I work my goddamn ass off to not drive places (helped by the fact I'm legally not allowed). I once had to ask an Audax organiser to keep the start open by 20 minutes once because the first train didn't get there until well past 6. Meaning I had to make an annual event bend its schedule to a shit and corrupt rail franchise. This is to a station less than 40 miles away on the same line as my starting station.

In other “just take the train” news, still have no response from EMR through any of the channels I have tried. Well fuck it I thought, let’s try the indirect trains - a combination of Northern or Transpenine Express and LNER.

LNER trumpet that you can book a space at the same time as booking a ticket if you do so via their website, but on attempting this I get a message saying that the reservation has failed, but not why (technical issue? All spaces booked already? Who knows, they aren’t saying)

Northern is first come, first served and they have two spots, so I could miss my connecting train if those spots are taken.

Transpenine Express, you have to book, you can do so via a number of means, so now I’m looking to book separate tickets for separate services which is going to cost more.

Ring EMR 03457 125 678 (then option 4, then option 1 to speak to someone)

also under the 'just take the train/ferry' to France, I contacted Eurostar asking why have they halted the bike service and when do they plan to reopen it. They literally copy paste answers and/or give non-answers like "watch out this space" every time. All channels have been exhausted, phone (no1 answers), twitter, email (extreme slow response).

I hate driving but its looking to be the most reliable, cheapest and flexible way for me to get to France, i will be parking the car near a TGV station and take the dreamy French trains from there.

At the moment the cost of doing this is £215 plus Eurotunnel which will be £100 at least each way. I still wont fly but if I did the flights are £60 return.

not all dreamy french trains take non dismantled bikes.
The service has much improved in clarity, the websites tells you clearly what you can do, as they have categorized fast trains between Ouigo and Inoui.

yeah I did a lot of research (online and in person) about this :)

OuiGo were mad cheap but dont accept bikes; SNCF branded ones do but in bin bags and dismantled; have tried this before and it works fine.

a 3h 48 min journey that will cover 400+ miles was just under €100, really puts UK trains in perspective, if you dont need to take the bike; OuiGo for same journey was €60.

They should open that channel foot/service tunnel wot froome rode through to the public

They should open that channel foot/service tunnel wot froome rode through to the public

must have some decent fans in there for some epic tailwind each way, dreamy

I find phone calls unpleasant due to niggling mental health problems, but it does look like it’s the only route that is going to work

i am sure you have, just stating the obvious that it's not all rosy out there either. london is actually pretty good, only not to the west and at peak times.
If i lived in paris i could only dream to have a thameslink equivalent that takes my family and 3 bikes 40km away in a hour with no booking.

but i maintain for you : the cheapestest way is to ride/train out to newhaven and ride/train to paris. ( no need to book )

I can 100% sympathise . It was last resort for me because obviously that bike request form is useless. Fwiw, they were quite helpful.

Is the alternative for more people to live in London?

Yes. The closer we live together , the more efficient all our services are, the closer we are to shops and culture, the less transport we need, and of course the fewer cars. Urban living is green.

Yeah, I used to love bike+Eurostar but they fucked us by using Covid as some excuse to shut it down (looking at you too, ferry providers). I went to Belgium to race a few weeks ago and used car+Chunnel. I hate driving but it's ok once you get out of the shithole that is the UK. The best bit about using the car though is the filling it up with Belgian beer on the way back.

That would be rad to the max to the power of sick.

Until you catch "some prick" with their stupid wide-bared gravel bike riding at 3kph ;)

More competition for accommodation, higher cost of living, fewer green spaces. A push towards increased urban living is unsustainable.

Sounds like CS3 at rush hour

Except in the tunnel they'd have fewer bikepacking bags?

If we are talking about "green" as in environmentally better for the planet/population as a whole, @william. is right. As the population grows, (good) urbanisation is much more sustainable than filling up the the countryside with individual houses and roads and carparks and shopping centres etc.
Still need better bike provision on trains though!

"every 1% increase in the population density of a city associates with a 0.79% reduction in its CO2 emissions per capita"

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11184-y

Still need better bike provision on trains though!

Yes and the more we complain about it and demand it and demonstrate the demand the better

So just tiny room for one bike on the whole train? Awful.

I think there's now two but the inexcusable bit is that they're too small for a lot of bikes.