When I sat down to plan what this piece was going to be, I assumed I would be writing about my day in Edinburgh to take part in Pedal on Parliament, holding its tenth iteration on the 23rd of April 2022, or perhaps about traveling to the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome to watch the UCI Nations Cup on the 24th. I imagined I would be sharing how despite not taking a car, I still managed to get a family of 4 to both events traveling from a rural area using only bikes and public transport. However, my experience this weekend highlighted to me that if you do live in rural areas, we are unfortunately a far way off from being able to go fully car-free and still enjoy hassle-free economical day adventures.
I live in a rural town in North Ayrshire, not far from the west coast. My town does not have a railway station, the nearest in a town over which can be reached easily by bike via a fully downhill multi-use pathway, traffic-free. From there the trains head to Ayr, Largs, or Glasgow. the service is fairly frequent in either direction, but far from affordable unless you take advantage of offers, railcard, flex passes, etc. My local bus service was once a shining beacon of what bus provision should be but has sadly declined to almost being unusable over the last ten years. Choosing Active Travel first can be challenging and inconvenient when your community is serviced in this way by public transport, but I consider myself an advocate and champion and share my experiences in the hope I may inspire or encourage others to reduce their car use or open up adventures and access to what lies beyond the boundaries of our town.
When I started sharing experiences I wanted what I posted or published to have integrity, so I would share what was accurate, and if that is a negative experience, then that can be just as valuable as the positive ones, and that is the situation I find myself in as I write this piece. I would also add a caveat to this article, that I fully appreciate the difficulties and pressures that many in the frontline of public services experience, and the often exaggerated criticism they face. This evening I experienced one of those situations which we likely all have faced at some point, a canceled train, not just one for the entire service for the evening leaving me stranded in Glasgow.
On the face of it, this may not seem like a major issue, there are usually alternative modes that are accessible for people to get to a destination. But if you add in the concept of using Multimode Active Travel, a canceled service can quickly move from an annoying issue to a crisis. In my situation, the canceled service was made worse because I had my family in tow, with four bikes between us. Bikes that when a service is canceled are not taken into consideration by service providers in terms of replacement travel provision. In particular, with two trains having been cancelled, I was left at 8pm on a Sunday, losing light, with inexperienced cyclists who would be unable to even consider the 30 miles ride home.
My options were few, with the chances of no trains for the remainder of the evening, I could send my family by bus or expensive taxi, however, the bikes would once again be an issue, they would need to be left overnight and then retrieved at a later date. I turned to the station staff at Glasgow Central, and if I am being one at a piece of my soul died in doing so. Firstly finding someone to get advice from was a task in itself, when I finally did I was met with “I am on a break”. I couldn’t believe it, I had such hopes when the rail service in Scotland was nationalised recently and expected the bad customer service that ScotRail was famous for would be revolutionised. Why do we as a society allow for a public service to be fronted by people who have the worst possible skills in terms of communication, no other sector would tolerate it.
Eventually, my crisis was solved by turning to a car. I begrudgingly had to turn to a family member who took some of my family home to retrieve the car and cycle rack, to drive back to the train station to collect the bikes. It was a bit like that puzzle with the chicken, fox, and bag of grain trying to cross a river. The weather during all of this was pleasant, dry, sunny, and the temperature was comfortable, I dread to think how worse it could have been if it was November.
In conclusion, the whole scenario has hut home to me that if you live in a rural area, then our transportation system just isn’t resilient enough to allow the car to be fully ditched. In particular, if you have a family, or traveling in a group with multiple bikes. A canceled train may be manageable for a solo competent, confident adult, but add in Children or those who maybe have accessibility issues, and the situation quickly becomes a concern.
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