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Pretty much how you’d build any train station in a city. Just look at any London train station. Article entirely meant to get ‘petrol heads’ riled up.
Cue the article comments about a war on motorists. Mostly from people who don’t even live there.
I’ve been through Cambridge on the train, and there’s always a shitload of bicycles. Presumably it’s mostly students about who use them locally, because there’s no way you’d actually get more than a handful on the trains themselves.
Presumably they’ve also got security, because if they tried that where I live, some lad with bolt cutters and a balaclava would help himself to the lot and swap it for heroin.
I lived there. It’s not just students. Loads of people commute by bike - it’s the quickest way by a mile. It’s only really recently that the council have done more than pay lip service to cycling, though; until then the local pop cycled in spite of the infrastructure rather than because of it. They have the UK’s biggest cycle park at the main station but it’s basically a shopping centre for thieves (bike theft is really bad all round Cambridge) so I think they’ve brought in a key-only area that you have to pay to use. Same at Cambridge North.
Based
What kind of lunatic takes their car to the train station anyway ?
Edit : ok, lunatic is a strong word (my intent was to use hyperbole for the laughs but, text and irony and all that…). Still, as someone who’s lived in two different semi-rural towns with decent train and bus services (and tons of bike racks at the train stations, although most people would use shitty “burner” bikes because of thefts) for a long time, that was a bit surprising to me
Park and ride people.
People that live far away from the train station?? How is that hard to understand?
I know this is fuck cars but that person shouldn’t be called a lunatic if they’re already using the train as part of their commute.
It’s actually a pretty good middle ground as you still avoid one car in a population center and that person still probably has a decent commute
That’s why there are parking lots next to rural train stations, at least here in Germany.
But it doesn’t make sense to put lots of parking spaces next to a train station right inside a city because there are so many better usages of that space in a city center.
Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of common sense?
Where I live, I could theoretically ride my bike to a bus stop to ride into downtown for work. However there is no bike path, or side walk and the speed limit is 55 with no shoulder. The road also gets a few hundred cars an hour. I’ve seen people ride bikes around my area, but never down my road, I’m very confident I’ll die. So I drive 10 minutes to a bus to ride for 45 minutes instead of drive 35 minutes alone in my car.
So, like every train station I have ever seen in Japan?
Are other countries not allowed to do something good if Japan did it first?
No, I point that out because I also lived in Hawaii for 6 years and when they finally built their light rail system on Oahu, they built hundreds of parking spaces around the station. They provided no bicycle parking and no commercial storefront space. Convenience stores, super markets, doctor’s offices, dental clinics, and maybe a small police outpost are all handy things to have next to the station. Last time I checked an online map, the parking spaces are hardly ever used. Who takes a car to a train station and leaves it so they can ride the train?
i think they address the upset
This just makes me realise how bike crazy the Netherlands is, Amsterdam recently built underground bicycle parking that can hold 20,000 bicycles.
This bike parking was built underneath a canal.
The people complaining about not having a car park would complain even more if Network Rail built one and then didn’t subsidise the parking charges.
Hard agree. Why do people always expect someone else to foot the bill for their parking needs?
Your car takes up space when parked. Somebody is paying for that space, so you need to do so when you park there. It’s not that difficult.
Some local residents have not been onboard with the lack of car spaces at the new station.
If you need a car to reach the station it’s questionable to claim you’re local.
But what about those folks who use a car to commute from their garage to their car?
I’m from the united states Midwest and have Heard people claim to be local to cities while living 20miles away from city limits.
You guys are wild when it comes to distances. I was recently in LA and everyone insisted a 20 minutes car commute classified as “close”. On another occasion, a lady literally told me “You said it was far away. It’s only 50 miles”.
20 minute car commute in LA is, what, 3 city blocks?
I rode a bicycle 120 miles a few years back just because I felt like it one day. I’m probably not the best just for what’s considered “reasonable”
That said, it really is the joke/meme “Americans think 100 years is a long time, Europeans think 100 miles is a long distance”
Personally, I feel like if I’m more than 3 miles away, I’m not local. I may be “from the area” but I’m not “a local”
Most people I know wouldn’t consider 50 miles to be “close” though in terms of “can I pop over for a quick trip or do I need to plan my day around it”
As for car rides, like… If I’m driving I don’t mind so much because I’m occupied by trying not to die, but as a passenger anything over 5 minutes is not a “quick trip”
To be fair, a 10km distance here in Canada can mean you’re part of the suburbs of a city. I’m in the suburbs of Montréal, but if someone asks me online where I’m from, I’m not gonna say my 10 000 people little town, I’ll say Montréal.
It’s what, 7 miles? I think that’s fair enough to say local I think?
There are train stations where I would much prefer a huge car park, because they’re on the “outer perimeter” of a city region where denser movement options become viable. But this sounds like a newly developed area designed under the sensible European 15-minute-city principles; where 3 parking spaces is the region taken up by a single small shop. So to me, all the complaints here sound very much like car-brain.
Better headline: New £200m train station will serve 1.8m yearly passengers, converts wasteful long-term car parking with valuable new homes and businesses, and uses more efficient transportation facilities like drop-off zones and over 1000 bicycle parking spaces.
Even better headline: new £200m train station is already projected to be too small for the expected footfall but Network Rail wouldn’t revise their figures before they built it.
