VIDEO. Traveling by train by bike: easier in Strasbourg than in Paris

BIKLOU, EPISODE 44. It is 7:30 in the morning, Guillaume Andrés is rushing to work. Wearing a helmet and a fluorescent yellow jacket, he races on a bicycle, but only for a few minutes. Arriving at Herdt (Bas-Rhin) station, he dismounts to board the train bound for Strasbourg. The bicycle easily finds a place on the train, and the cyclist has a place. A place from which Guillaume can observe the cars idling on the highway leading to the capital of Alsace.

The 25-year-old, who also has a car, is happy with his choice of intermodal transport: “We don’t have traffic jams, we can clear our heads on the road.” This option is possible because Guillaume lives in a region where trains have much more space for unassembled bicycles than in other regions of France.

Every week on the Le Parisien Facebook page you will find a new episode of our Biclu series.

Putting a bike on a train in Paris is mission impossible

Guillaume’s train has eighteen seats reserved for cyclists, compared to the national average of 6 seats per train. “Is that a lot,” we ask him. “No, not necessarily, if you look at the Netherlands, there are whole carriages for bicycles,” he replies with envy.

SNCF indicates that 95% of TER trains are equipped with space for bicycles. But the problem is that many regional trains, such as the Transilien in Ile-de-France, prohibit the use of bicycles during peak hours during the week, which is the time when most passengers would like to be able to use them. To take Transilien by bike, you either have to get up very early or have a very strange work schedule. Bicycles are allowed there from Monday to Friday before 6:30 am, from 9:30 to 16:30 and after 19:30.

A practical and environmentally friendly solution for long-distance cycling.

Tripling cycling by 2024 is one of the state’s ambitions to achieve the goals set by the Oriented Mobility (LOM) Act. Allowing passengers to take bicycles on trains is one way to achieve this goal. A train-bike or bike-train combination is a practical and environmentally friendly solution for people who work away from home.

Guillaume lives 20 km from Strasbourg, so his regional train allows him to get through the first part of the trip without breaking a sweat. After getting off the rails, he bikes 7 km to get to his office in Illkirch (Lower Rhine). Even if the engineer is very athletic, a daily round trip bike ride of more than 50 km will be difficult to sustain.

Virginie uses two different bikes every day

Virginie Haumbrecht, public relations manager in Strasbourg, has found a solution to avoid the rush hour problem: she uses two bicycles. The first bike is from her home in Eckversheim (Bas-Rhin) to get to the station where she parks her car. And the second bicycle, which she leaves to sleep in the parking lot of the Strasbourg station and picks up when she arrives.

And it is the issue of parking near stations that is one of the keys to intermodality, as Antoine Couet, head of research at Vélo et Territoires, points out. “We will never be able to offer enough seats on trains to absorb the flow of passengers; The real challenge for SNCF is to guarantee safe parking spaces for train departures and arrivals.”

SNCF Gares & Connexions included in its strategic plan last September the target of building 70,000 additional secure parking spaces. Today the French station manager offers 19,000.

“We took the bike off the TGV.”

The choice of equipment for regional trains is the responsibility of regional councils. Thus, some will promote access to cycling while others will block it. In terms of national lines, the SNCF has gone through several periods, as detailed by Eric Marchandis of the association CyclotransEurope.

“Single-deck TGVs, which have been running for about thirty years, are going to be reformed; 4 places for bicycles have appeared on board. » It is this type of high-speed train that still connects Paris with Strasbourg.

“From 2000 to 2010, we introduced double-decker TGVs and removed the bicycle from them. Between 2020 and 2030, SNCF will return bicycles to the train. We hope it will take less than ten years,” concludes Eric Marchandis.

In the future, the public carrier will never be able to ignore the little queen again: a January 2021 decree obliges it to provide eight bicycle spaces on any new or refurbished train.

Ticket Booking Mystery

Cyclists expect many other improvements, such as accessibility efforts, with ramps or elevators to access platforms. Or even advances in online information.

Today, when buying train tickets, it is still very difficult to know whether you will be able to reserve a place for your bike, even if SNCF gives advice online. To help you get your bearings, CyclotransEurope also offers a free downloadable guide, Train Travel by Bike.

Find all episodes of Biklu.