Yes you can. You pay. Then no, you can't.

[whole diary]

[chrisr_75]

This led me to question how much bike travel on trains is really necessary if there is so much more bike usage in the Netherlands and apparently no more bikes on trains.

Whilst in the Netherlands a few weeks ago I was told that a lot of people have two bikes. So probably one for each end of the journey.

I suspected that might be the case. That would account for the large number of bikes parked at all times of day. Is provision of enough storage for this a way of reducing the problem of less cycle capacity on trains?

Having lived in the Netherlands for several years, I can indeed confirm that many people have 2 or sometimes several more bikes strategically positioned in various bike parks at each end of their commute and often one or two dotted about at convenient places in their home town or city. In 3.5 years there, I don't recall ever seeing a full size bike on a commuter train, just an rare foldable from time to time.

Over there, the attitude towards bikes is that they are solely a means of getting from A to B and people generally don't use expensive carbon fibre & titanium species for general transport, so are much less prissy about their machines.

To put some scale to this, Utrecht Centraal has a covered bike park of some 4200 spaces...