Passenger Trains > Caltrain Bikers Feel Bumpy Ride

Caltrain bikers feel bumpy ride
Cyclists turned away as rail ridership surges
By Will Oremus, MEDIANEWS STAFF
Article Last Updated: 12/04/2007 05:44:09 AM PST

Click photo to enlargeA line of bicyclists wait to put their bikes on the Caltrain Friday morning at San mateo's — It's 5:15 p.m., rush hour at Caltrain's Hillsdale station. Among the dozens of riders arrayed across the platform to catch the northbound "Baby Bullet" express train, the most watchful are the cyclists. They're hoping they don't get turned away.

When Caltrain started its bicycle program in 1992, riders were relatively scarce on the San Jose-to-San Francisco commuter line. Officials figured it couldn't hurt to replace some empty seats with bike racks, giving commuters a new, eco-friendly way to get from the train stop to their final destination.

Fast-forward to 2007: Ridership is soaring amid high gas prices and global warming fears. The bicycle program is a well-established hit, with about one in 15 Caltrain riders bringing their wheels on board, according to a February ridershipcount.

It's a success story, to be sure. But there's a hitch: Caltrains are getting so crowded at peak commute hours that not everyone's bike can fit on board. So when a Baby Bullet pulls out of the station, a handful of the rail line's most dedicated customers are left behind.

Officials have some ideas for addressing the trend, but cyclists fear it could get worse before it improves. It's a problem that illustrates the impossibility of pleasing everyone on a rail line that remains chronically cash-strapped, even as its popularity approaches new heights.

Earlier this year, Caltrain took an online survey of more than 1,000 current and former riders who regularly brought bikes on board.
Preliminary results show that 64 percent reported being "bumped" from crowded trains at least once in the past 12 months. Of those, nearly a quarter had been bumped 10 times or more.

It used to happen to Judy Hanson of Redwood City all the time.

Each day, she would bike the 2 miles from her house to the Redwood City station, hop the train to San Francisco and then bike to her job as a special education teacher. It took about an hour, but it beat driving in traffic.

It was on the return trip that she ran into trouble. She'd try to arrive early in order to stake out her position. But inevitably there would be times when the other cyclists outmaneuvered her, leaving her to wait for the next train.

With many express routes skipping the Redwood City station, the delay could be close to an hour. "When you're missing an hour at home, you're missing the chance to cook dinner, talk to the kids — it's a painful hour," Hanson says.

She has since taken a job closer to home, at San Mateo's Aragon High School, in part because of the hassle of the commute.

Hanson is not alone. In the survey cited above, 25 percent of former riders who used bikes said they stopped riding Caltrain because they were tired of being bumped.

Caltrain is well aware of the issue. The agency has been adding bike storage racks and lockers at popular stations such as San Francisco and Palo Alto, and it's been working since January on a "Bicycle Master Plan" that should be finished next spring.

The reality, however, is that the problem isn't going away anytime soon.

"It's a tricky situation," says spokesman Jonah Weinberg. "We were one of the first agencies in the country to accommodate bicyclists, and we want to continue to be supportive of them. But at the same time, we're leaving out 100 seats on a train for something like 16 or 32 bikes if it's full."

With some peak-hour express trains approaching full capacity, Caltrain can't add more bike cars without bumping fare-paying passengers. That's a sacrifice an agency with chronic budget deficits can't afford.

Unfortunately, Weinberg said, it also can't afford to run more or longer trains. Its resources are already stretched to the limit at peak hours.

Compounding the hassle for cyclists is that it's impossible to know in advance the bike capacity of any given train. Some have one bike car, others have two. And some bike cars — the newer, smooth-sided ones — hold 16 bikes, while others hold 32.

With the newer Bombardier cars slowly replacing the old, corrugated gallery cars, Paul Wendt of Belmont worries that Caltrain's bike capacity is actually decreasing.

As the San Mateo County representative on Caltrain's citizen Bicycle Advisory Committee, he's pushing for a redesign of the cars to hold more bikes. "Realistically, I don't think that's in the cards," he admits.

In the long term, Caltrain officials are pointing to electrification as the solution to the rail line's capacity problems. By 2015, it hopes to be running shorter, quicker, electric trains that could serve each station at least once every half-hour.

For now, perhaps Wendt's personal solution is the best hope for bikers who hate being bumped. He owns a special, foldable bike that can be stored easily in a luggage compartment — and not once in 20 years has it caused him to miss his train.


E-mail Will Oremus at woremus@dailynewsgroup.com.

Let's all heave a nostalgic collective *sigh* for the enlightened simplicity of the good old days when everything was wonderful and the SP had only ONE rule about taking a bicycle on a commuter train.

RPM

What rule was that? "First Come First Served?"

Probably no bikes.

Electrification by 2015? Really??

hesdjjim Wrote:
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> What rule was that? "First Come First Served?"

danf Wrote:
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...
> Electrification by 2015? Really??
>

That's the official timetable; although, as with most large projects that involve government agencies, it is likely very optimistic and possibly unrealistic.

Whine, whine, whine.

Caltrain has a lot more money than most railroads. They get the advantage of tax subsidies. Still, they cannot afford to rip out more seats to satisfy bikers. Maybe the bikers should pay more for bringing their vehicles on board and help generate some income to offset the loss of seats for passengers.

stash Wrote:
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> Maybe the bikers should pay more
> for bringing their vehicles on board and help
> generate some income to offset the loss of seats
> for passengers.

In CA it is more likely that bicycle-toting passengers would get a free ride since they are "green" friendly and limiting their "carbon footprint".

prr60 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In CA it is more likely that bicycle-toting
> passengers would get a free ride since they are
> "green" friendly and limiting their "carbon
> footprint".


Nah. Just the part about not having to ride the bus is incentive enough for me!

2015? Wow that is an impressive timetable.

For some reason I can hear the chants of "rolling silent death machines"

Is Caltrain doing a grade separation project?

It appears that Caltrain has been very, very generous to the bike riders, providing them with a huge part of their floorspace. In a market-driven business this "popularity" would have a price. In a socially engineered enterprise it starts out as a courtesy or a gift and then becomes an entitlement.
I have tried to ride in the bike area, to look out the rear/front window, and they get very territorial about letting a non-biker even ride in "their" area. It would be very easy to condemn them a jerks, but of course some of them are probably decent, considerate passengers.

railstiesballast Wrote:
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> It appears that Caltrain has been very, very
> generous to the bike riders

Don't be ridiculous.

Caltrain has spent tens of millions of dollars
on new parking garages, to encourage SOV car
trips to stations. Capital costs alone are
on the order of $30k per automobile user. (To make
matters worse, the Sunnyvale garage encroached
on the ROW, making it impossible to put in
express tracks at reasonable cost.)

Caltrain also had opportunity to purchase
additional Bombardier railcars back in
the late 1990s. Instead, they squandered
that opportunity, purchasing the useless
Gallery cars -- at higher cost.

In short, Caltrain staff has pissed
away huge amounts of money, a very
tiny faction of which could have vastly
increased bike access.

BTW, that other commuter rail
service running Bombardier cars
(ACE) also ran into bike capacity
problems. Rather than blame
the customer, they simply went
out and fixed the problem.

railstiesballast Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have tried to ride in the bike area, to look out
> the rear/front window, and they get very
> territorial about letting a non-biker even ride in
> "their" area. It would be very easy to condemn
> them a jerks, but of course some of them are
> probably decent, considerate passengers.

Well, the bike half of the cab-car is specifically designated for bicyclists and their bikes. This is displayed on stickers which can be seen as you enter that part of the car. The reason is that there are spaces for 32 bikes, and in that half of the car there are exactly 32 seats. If I brought a bike on board I wouldn't want to have to sit in another part of the train away from my bike where I couldn't keep an eye on it. I have seen a few bicycles stolen from the train over the years. I managed to stop one of them from being stolen one lucky day.

Back to the subject of on-board bicycle capacity, I think things could be done a lot better. Rather than try to cram 32 bikes into a single car (which causes ridiculous dwell-times at busy stations), I think that each cab-car should have space for 16 bikes, and all of the other cars should have space for 8 bikes. This way, 4-car trains would have capacity for 40 bikes, and 5-car trains would have capacity for 48 to 56 bikes (depending on whether one of the trailer cars was another cab-car). Not only would this provide additional capacity, but it would spread the load of bikes throughout the entire train so as to speed the loading/unloading process. True, you lose 8 seats per non-cab-car, but you gain 16 seats in each cab-car. Net number of lost seats for a 4-car train: 8. Net number of lost seats for a 5-car train: 16 or NEGATIVE 8 (ie: 8 seats GAINED), again, depending on whether one of the trailer cars was another cab-car.

Another benefit to this system is that when a train which normally has two bike cars instead shows up with only one, there is less of a "shock" to the riders. Instead of 32 missing bike spots, there would only be 8 missing bike slots.

Also, we'd no longer have bicyclists intent on riding their bike down the platform at 30mph in order to reach the bike car -- every car would be a bike car.

I like the few bikes in more cars idea.

Also, CalTrain desperately needs a better way to store bikes on board. My apologies to whoever came up with the current bungee system, but it blows.

A project I did back in school was designing an inexpensive bike rack system that would work inside CalTrain cars. It carried more bikes and allowed them to be removed one at a time, instead of the cumbersome "dig yours from the bottom of the pile" system now in use. I actually sent it to SamTrans as a suggestion and got a big brush off.

There are a lot of companies around the Peninsula that specialize in designing creative solutions to thorny problems. CalTrain might find some assistance with this issue by talking to a few of them.

Z

Caltrain-Engr Wrote:
>
> I think that each cab-car should have space for 16
> bikes, and all of the other cars should have space
> for 8 bikes. This way, 4-car trains would have
> capacity for 40 bikes, and 5-car trains would have
> capacity for 48 to 56 bikes (depending on whether
> one of the trailer cars was another cab-car). Not
> only would this provide additional capacity, but
> it would spread the load of bikes throughout the
> entire train so as to speed the loading/unloading
> process.

Indeed that is a most logical proposal, so of
course it will never happen. Current plans
for the new Caltrain EMU's call for the
continued use of dedicated bike cars.

I know it cost the bike riders more, but what about putting highly secure bike storage at each stop and then a bike rider could purchase a second bike and leave one at the beginning stop and one at the ending stop provided it was for a daily commute

I would think using energy and weight of the car space to haul bikes and riders would be enough of a guilt trip for many a Cail greenie weenie to purchase a second bike

those that are going different places each trip would still have smaller places to take a bike on the train

two bikes is way cheaper than even one cheap car provided they do not get constantly stolen

and adding more weight and space to haul bikes that take up a lot of space makes no sense to me

What is the surcharge for bringing a bike on board?

symph1 Wrote:
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> What is the surcharge for bringing a bike on
> board?

Exactly $0.00.

zephyrus Wrote:
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> I like the few bikes in more cars idea.

There is one problem with a few bikes in more cars idea. Here I am in Redwood City with my bike waiting for the train and a 5 car train comes in. Which of the 5 cars has room for my bike. I would have to keep checking cars until I find one that has room for my bike. That would also cause problems in extending dwell time. Also, it would add confusion if there were 10 other people doing the same thing I am. It is much simpler to only have one car that can cary bikes.

I have the same concern that sgerken has about taking my bike on the Capitol Corridor. What if I tried to put my bike on the train, and the racks on the car I first boarded were full, and then the train decides to leave while I'm moving to another car? If it happened on Caltrain, I'd be mad; but if it happened on a Capitol Corridor train, I'd be stranded.

hesdjjim Wrote:
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> I have the same concern that sgerken has about
> taking my bike on the Capitol Corridor. What if I
> tried to put my bike on the train, and the racks
> on the car I first boarded were full, and then the
> train decides to leave while I'm moving to another
> car?

This is why, when Caltrain purchases modern
EMU equipment, they need to get trainsets with
open gangways. Or at least some configuration
that makes it easy to walk between cars.

Unfortunately, Caltrain staff does not seem
to understand this.