Reply from 'Eurostar Traveller Care' to my email (which was largely as provided by CTC). Probably a standard reply.
Dear [Spinney],
Thank you for contacting us regarding the recent change to our bicycle policy.
First and foremost, we would like to reassure you that the new policy isn’t designed to penalise cyclist or to hamper the carriage of bicycles on our trains. On the contrary, passengers travelling with bikes continue to be important to us and we have therefore adapted our policy to provide a more straightforward, standardised service that takes into account the fact that we are moving towards a mixed fleet service with varying layouts of storage space.
As you pointed out, the fundamental change is that bikes will now need to be transported in a bike box, which you can source yourself or we are happy to provide when you register a bike. The reason for this is that when packaging bikes in this way, we are able to accommodate them on any one of our trains in a cross-compatible, dedicated space. We would like to reassure you that any sized bike box will be accepted.
In addition, the bikes will be stored more securely, eliminating the potential for damage in transit. Bike boxes also take up less space which means we can therefore be more flexible in catering for the demand from our passengers on any given day. In fact, the capacity on each train remains the same and on certain trains we plan to accommodate more bikes than before.
We fully understand your concern and hope that you will gather that our efforts will provide a better and more robust service for cyclists. Rest assured that our staff are trained and ready to assist with the new procedure to ensure it is a seamless experience for our passengers.
Kind regards,
Eurostar Traveller Care
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My reply (I'm not putting any money on getting a reply that actually addresses any of my points...)
Dear 'Eurostar Traveller Care'
I'm afraid your reply does not reassure me at all.
A key feature of many cycling holidays is that you can leave home on your bike, cycle to a train station and get the train to the beginning of your cycle tour - thus not needing to use a car at all. Your new policy completely rules out using Eurostar on this kind of trip - how can a cyclist manage to get a bike box to the Eurostar terminal on their bike, and what are they supposed to do with it once they reach the end of the Eurostar part of the trip? Thus encouraging car use instead of train use - so possibly losing you passengers and encouraging cyclists to use a less sustainable form of transport.
And when you say you have staff trained and ready to assist, I'm guessing you mean someone who can tell the cyclist what the new rules are, not someone equipped with the necessary spanners etc to help them dismantle parts of the bike as necessary to put it into a bike box?
[Spinney]
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