BICLOU, EPISODE 44 - It's 7:30 am, Guillaume Andres rushes to work.
Helmet, dressed in a fluorescent yellow jacket, he spins on his bike, but only for a few minutes.
Arrived at the station of Hœrdt (Bas-Rhin), he already gets off his mount to board a train, direction Strasbourg.
The bicycle easily finds a place to lodge in the train and the cyclist a seat.
A seat from which Guillaume can observe the cars idling on the motorway that leads to the Alsatian capital.
The 25-year-old, who also owns a car, relishes his choice of intermodal bike-hauler, "We don't have traffic jams, we can clear our heads on the way".
This option is possible because Guillaume lives in a region where the trains have many more spaces for non-dismantled bicycles than in other regions of France.
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Putting your bike on the train in Paris, mission impossible
Eighteen dedicated bicycle spaces in Guillaume's train against a national average of 6 spaces per train.
It is a lot we ask him, "No, not necessarily when you look at the Netherlands, there are whole wagons for bicycles", he replies, envious.
The SNCF indicates that 95% of the TER are equipped with places for bicycles.
But the problem is that many regional trains, such as the Transilien in Ile-de-France, prohibit bicycles during rush hour on weekdays, so at times when the majority of velotafeurs would like to be able to take it.
To take the Transilien with your bike, you either have to get up very early or have very staggered working hours.
Bicycles are in fact authorized there from Monday to Friday before 6:30 a.m., between 9:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. and after 7:30 p.m.
A practical and ecological solution for long distance cycling
Tripling the modal share of cycling by 2024 is one of the State's ambitions to meet the objectives set by the Mobility Orientation Law (LOM).
Allowing commuters to take their bikes on the train is one way to achieve this goal.
The train-bike or bike-train combination is a practical and ecological solution for people who work away from home.
Guillaume lives 20 km from Strasbourg, so his regional train allows him to do this first part of the trip without sweating.
Leaving the rails, he then rolls 7 km on his bicycle to reach his office in Illkirch (Bas-Rhin).
Even if the engineer is very sporty, a cycle trip of more than 50 km round trip would be difficult to sustain on a daily basis.
Virginie uses two different bikes every day
Virginie Haumbrecht, communications officer in Strasbourg, has found a solution to avoid the rush hour problem: she uses two bicycles.
A first bike from her home, in Eckwersheim (Bas-Rhin), to reach the station where she parks her vehicle.
And a second bike that she lets sleep in the Strasbourg train station parking lot and that she picks up when she arrives.
And it is the question of parking near stations that is one of the keys to intermodality, as Antoine Coué of the Vélo et Territoire association emphasizes.
"We will never be able to offer enough places on the trains to absorb the flow of velotafeurs, the real challenge for SNCF is to guarantee secure parking spaces at the departure and arrival of its trains".
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SNCF Gares & Connexions included in its strategic plan last September the objective of building 70,000 additional secure parking spaces.
Today the manager of stations in France offers 19,000.
"We have withdrawn the bike from the TGV"
The choice of equipment for regional trains is the responsibility of the Regional Councils.
Thus, some will promote access to the bicycle and others block it.
For the national lines, the SNCF has known several periods that Erick Marchandise of the CyclotransEurope association explains to us.
“The single-stage TGVs which have been running for about thirty years will be reformed. On board, there were 4 places for bicycles.
It is this type of TGV which still connects Paris to Strasbourg.
“From 2,000 to 2,010, the double-decker TGVs were put into service and the bikes were withdrawn from the TGVs.
For the period 2020 to 2030, the SNCF puts the bikes back on the train.
We hope that it will take less than ten years, ”concludes Eric Marchandise.
In the future, the public carrier will never be able to ignore the little queen again, a decree of January 2021 obliges it to provide eight bicycle spaces in any new or renovated train.
The puzzle of ticket reservations
Many other improvements are expected by cyclists, such as efforts on accessibility, with ramps or lifts to access the platforms.
Or even progress on online information.
Today when buying train tickets, it is still very difficult to know if you can reserve a place for your bike, even if the SNCF gives advice online.
To find your way around, the CyclotransEurope association also offers a free downloadable guide "Traveling by train with your bike".
Find all the episodes of the Biclou series.
