Camden New Journal - Letters to the Editor: What campaigning cyclists demand from Eurostar

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Camden New Journal - Letters to the Editor
Published: 8 November 2007

What campaigning cyclists demand from Eurostar

• EUROSTAR services will be using St Pancras International from November 14.
They have a brand new station with champagne bar, but have thought very little about cyclists wanting to use the station or the Eurostar service.
There are no secure cycle stands at the station, just 30 old-fashioned insecure loops at the far end of the car park. If you want to take your bike on Eurostar, you must take it apart and put it in a bag to fit on the rack. Otherwise you pay £20 each way to send on a separate train, to arrive within 24 hours.
The new one-way system in Midland Road will cause cyclists to make long detours to get to the station or to leave it. The new cycle lanes are poorly designed, tending to encourage cyclists to take up unsafe road positions. The way to the station is not signed from the nearby cycle routes.
Camden Cycling Campaign will be demonstrating with others from 8am to 11am at St Pancras International on November 14. We invite readers to join us.
Our demands are:
– Reallocate part of the car park to cycles within three months and provide proper Sheffield stands to which frames can be secured. Space for at least 250 cycles is needed, to be expanded when necessary.
– Ensure that the secure cycle parking facility is opened by 2011 at the latest with no timetable slippage.
– Improve cycle parking at London stations generally.
– Signage of route in both directions between the Bloomsbury cycle route and St Pancras within three months.
– Improvements to the spur within six months.
– Also maps of the cycle network and directions to it from inside all parts of the station. First Capital Connect, who operate Thameslink, are already committed to doing this.
– Contraflow on Midland Road from entrance of Thameslink station northbound within six months. Cycle contraflow along rest of Midland Road within one year.
– The area between Euston Road and the canal from Euston Station to Caledonian Road to have speed limit reduced to 20mph. Around Gare du Nord the speed limit is 15kmh (10mph) by way of comparison.
– Eurostar to introduce trial carriage of cycles within six months and full carriage within a year.
– Cross reservations for cycles, including internet and phone booking within one year for all long distance rail travel.
– Eurostar to give greater emphasis on its website to cycle hire than it does to car hire, particularly on its front page where its encouraging of driving is in sharp contradiction to its claim to be green.
Stafano Casalotti and Jean Dollimore
Joint Co-ordinators Camden Cycling Campaign, NW5

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, Camden New Journal, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@camdennewjournal.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Tuesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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