From: Martin Engel <martinengel_at_(domain_name_was_removed)>
Date: Tue Dec 04 2007 - 18:46:15 PST

In Will Oremus' article is a great example of Caltrain's conception of itself. What business do they think they in? As the demand for bike carrying space increases, the available amount decreases. People who carry their bikes with them are part of the solution of transit connectivity; the first and last mile problem that Caltrain, apparently, is not interested in. In other words, urban mass transit is someone else's business, not theirs.

And, that is the central issue. The rail bureaucracy is only interested in its own rail expansion, not urban transit connectivity. Their game becomes a lose-lose enterprise, not a win-win. Some time ago I pointed out how, as they struggle to increase their ridership, their costs also increase and thus perpetuate their deficit. So, they wait for their tooth fairy to solve their problems.

They won't get their "shorter, quicker, electric trains" for this, or any other Christmas, for decades. The FRA is against it. If they want to electrify, it can only be a replacement of the heavy Diesel locomotives with heavy electric ones, because they will still have the same train loads to push or pull. Amortizing the cost of electrification and rolling stock replacement will take many years. It's a zero-sum game. In short, don't hold your breath.

Martin

PS: BATN, below, is the outspoken and critical Yahoo editor of the blog that lists news articles devoted to transportation.

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Published Tuesday, December 4, 2007, by the Redwood City Daily News

Run off the rails
Cyclists turned away as Caltrain ridership surges

By Will Oremus
Daily News Staff Writer

It's 5:15 p.m., rush hour at Caltrain's Hillsdale station in San Mateo. Among the dozens of riders arrayed across the platform to catch the northbound "Baby Bullet" express train, the most watchful are the bicyclists.

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 ridership count.

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 in the cold.

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 on-line 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.

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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. [BATN notes that Caltrain initially tried to suppress bikes-on-trains issues as part of the master plan by declaring these to be outside the scope of the plan. Caltrain's goal, it appears, was aiming to make the master plan all about figuring out how to get riders to leave their bike(s) at stations.]

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." [BATN notes the Caltrain spokesman is either lying or ignorant. Instead of the 3-for-1 ratio he implies, it's actually a maximally space-efficient 1-for-1 ratio: seats accommodating a maximum of 32 seated passengers were removed to create a 32-bike storage area.]

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. [BATN: And while fare-paying riders with bikes are regularly denied boarding for lack of bike storage space, riders without bikes are never denied boarding for lack of seats.]

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. [BATN: Bombardier bike cars could, however, be modified to carry 32 bikes, thus ensuring a consistent and predictable 32-bike minimum capacity for all trains, regardless of equipment type. The gallery car bike spaces were also created by a "home-grown" retrofit.]

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. [BATN: Now that's the sort of self-defeatist attitude the bicycle advisory committee needs more of!]

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.

HOT WHEELS Caltrain's annual ridership count shows more people bringing bikes on board in recent years:

Year Ridership Bikes*

2007 33,841 2,334
2006 32,031 1,136
2005 28,393 1,860
2004 25,550 1,591

*Figures are from a ridership count conducted on a single weekday each February, and can be affected by conditions such as weather.

SOURCE: Caltrain

E-mail Will Oremus at woremus@...

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Martin Engel
1621 Stone Pine Lane
Menlo Park, CA 94025
650:323-1670
martinengel@earthlink.net


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Received on Tue Dec 4 20:25:50 2007