Lijo

Hello!

Im a random industrial design student from Sweden. I just finished a project on how to allow bike+train combination travels, and I thought you might wanna discuss the idea with me? In Sweden its not possible to bring a bike on most trains, I'm not sure why actually, I guess our politicians don't like the idea. Is it possible where you live? Have you ever tried traveling with your bike on a train? Please discuss! I will try to get an opportunity to show this to the politicians in Sweden so I'd love to hear your ideas and experiences before talking to them.

Animation describing the concept:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31bQmXZHrrE

Have a good week!
//Jonas
Jönköping, Sweden

ebow3d

Well, I live in Hong Kong, where there are not many bicycle ways at all. One cannot, for instance ride along our great long bridges, like the Tsing Ma bridge. That is just because there is no money in it for the four families that own Hong Kong.

However, surprisingly, we are allowed to take bikes on the trains.

Lijo

Hmm interesting, it's the complete opposite here, bike roads everywhere but no space for storing bikes in the trains

JustinNY

I live in the New York City area and I've seen people bring bikes on the commuter trains. I'm not sure what the actual rules are on this, I can imagine if many people did this during peak hours it would be chaos.

fly:yes/land:no

in so cal, lots of people bring their bikes on the train between orange county and san diego. these train also tends to be pretty busy during certain times of the day and weekends. some thoughts that i have related to the double seat/rack concept:

- when it is busy, there will still be no place to put your bike because people will simply convert the racks to seat mode. the surfliner has dedicated bike racks near the entrances on most trains, and those that don't have a luggage car that can accept the bikes.

- the racks will need some way for the bikes to be locked. when it is busy, i sometimes have to sit on a different train from my bike, and i always lock my bike.





also, i thought that you were talking about the shweeb based on the thread title, lol.

Lijo

ah yeah rush hours would definitely be a problem. could be fixed by a smart-phone app or something on which you could book a "bike stand", and only allowing bike transport if you have booked a slot. then you would know that there is space for your bike but i guess the best (and most expensive) solution would be for the train operator to run ****loads of trains all the time. but who's gonna pay?