August pilot program tests lifting BART ban on bikes during commute hours
on September 5, 2012
BART officials, transit riders, and bicycle advocates have given a provisional thumbs up to a pilot program that ran on Fridays this August, allowing cyclists and their bikes to board trains during rush hour. Bikes are not usually allowed on Transbay trains during peak commute periods, which cover weekday mornings from roughly 6:30 to 9 am and during the afternoons from about 4:30 to 7 pm.
According to BART Communications Department Manager Alicia Trost, bicycles are restricted from trains during rush hour due to concerns about “passenger comfort, safety and ease of getting on and off.” But the restrictions were lifted on Fridays last month. BART wanted to see if allowing bicycles on trains during commute periods was feasible. Trost said lifting the bike blackout hours could “extend the reach of BART for passengers with bikes and potentially grow ridership.”
“It looks promising,” said Steve Beroldo, BART’s bike program manager, of the bike pilot program. “There haven’t been any disasters.”
The pilot will not continue into September, but its results may affect future bike policy for the agency.
BART planned the Commute Period Bike Pilot in conjunction with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and the East Bay Bicycle Coalition (EBBC). Renee Rivera, executive director at the EBBC, has been advocating for BART to lift the bike blackout hours entirely. According to Rivera, cities like New York allow cyclists to board subway trains with their bikes at any time, as long as there’s room in the cars.
Rivera said the trial period went “very smoothly.” Bicycles did not cause train delays during the first four Fridays in August. According to Rivera, lifting the blackout had a “positive impact for people living in the East Bay more than anywhere,” given the number of BART riders who commute to San Francisco each weekday. According to June 2012 ridership statistics, BART riders make nearly 182,000 Transbay trips every weekday. BART spokesman Jim Allison called these East Bay riders commuting to the city BART’s “bread and butter.”
Riders making trips within the East Bay also stand to benefit from the pilot program, Rivera said. She offered the example of a bicyclist who commutes on BART from Orinda to Emeryville, with short bike trips on both ends. Typically, this rider would face four hours of blackouts during commute times.
Kristie Osgood, 44, rides her bike to BART every morning, and was sitting on the train floor holding her bicycle last Friday. Osgood recently moved to the East Bay, and commutes to San Francisco daily. She said that since her move, she has been waking up at 4 am in order to board BART before the bike blackouts started. Asked about the August Fridays, Osgood said, “I love them.”
Other bicyclists on BART last Friday agreed. Adam Theisen, 22, is a bike messenger. He said he appreciated being able to take his bike on BART in the morning. But Theisen was critical of BART’s usual bike policies. “I don’t understand why BART hasn’t figured out what Caltrain has,” he said, referring to the designated bike cars on the trains that run between San Francisco and the South Bay.
Other riders said they would like to see a train car reserved for bikes, and expressed concerns about bikes causing additional crowding during the busy commute period. Vi Jones, 50, said she has trouble getting on and off trains when three or four bikes are clustered around the doors. “It crowds out other people,” she said. Jones said she supported a “an extra car or two” specifically for bicycles, to avoid crowding.
Bob Davis, 65, was riding a packed BART train to San Francisco Friday morning and was critical of the pilot program, calling it poorly planned. “To assume that any car will always have the room doesn’t seem like good planning,” Davis said. Davis pointed out bicycles that were blocking the doorway as the train pulled into the West Oakland station.
BART has been conducting an online survey about the pilot, and received more than 4,000 responses in the first two weeks of the program, according to Allison, the BART spokesman. Rivera estimated that 2 out of 3 of these surveys were either positive or said that the bikes made no difference. BART officials have been monitoring how bikes and riders have coexisted on trains in August, and will conduct a more scientific survey in September.
BART officials will next write a formal report on the pilot period, which Allison said the transit agency will bring to its Board of Directors in November. Any changes in policy would need to be approved by the board.
In the meantime, according to Bike Program Manager Steve Beroldo, BART officials are also reviewing how to accommodate “various wheeled objects,” including strollers and wheelchairs. Since 2008, the transit agency has removed seats near doors from more than 300 cars to create more open space in its trains.
-
- Bikes parked inside MacArthur BART station in Oakland.
-
- A bicyclist boards BART last Friday morning, during the month-long program to allow bicycles on trains during busy Friday commute hours.
-
- Riders wait for BART on a Friday morning at the Lake Merritt Station.
9 Comments
Oakland North welcomes comments from our readers, but we ask users to keep all discussion civil and on-topic. Comments post automatically without review from our staff, but we reserve the right to delete material that is libelous, a personal attack, or spam. We request that commenters consistently use the same login name. Comments from the same user posted under multiple aliases may be deleted. Oakland North assumes no liability for comments posted to the site and no endorsement is implied; commenters are solely responsible for their own content.
Oakland North
Oakland North is an online news service produced by students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and covering Oakland, California. Our goals are to improve local coverage, innovate with digital media, and listen to you–about the issues that concern you and the reporting you’d like to see in your community. Please send news tips to: oaklandnorthstaff@gmail.com.
Thanks for the followup! Although I’m not currently carting a bike on the train when I commute, I do use them on both ends and was curious how things were ‘rolling.’ Glad to hear it went well, and to hear what logistical issues are still involved. Seems that increasing bike parking at every station would be good investment as fewer people drive and more people live in apartments closer to stations.
Cheers.
[…] BART Rush Hour Bike Pilot Results “Promising”, Board Report in Nov (Oakland North) […]
As an EB commuter attending SFSU, I’m very happy BART is looking into eliminating bike blackouts. However, when I take my bike on BART I feel like I’m in the way of non-bikers. I’m worried non-biker patience will eventually wear thin, and biker politeness will eventually flag. (It’s a pain constantly having to tweak my handlebars, and scoot my wheels this way and that to allow people around my bike.)
Additionally, a drawback to taking my bike is that due to the constant bike-tending required, I can’t simply sit & do work as I can on days when I don’t take my bike. It would be awesome to not only be able to take my bike, but to still take advantage of someone else doing the driving!
The solution to both? One dedicate bike car on the end of every train. Rip out all the seats, install secured bike stalls arranged to naturally encourage entry/exit from the appropriate doors (diagonal parking row down the center with rails separating stalls, curved recesses in the floor to cradle wheels, stalls on both ends of train angled toward middle to facilitate egress, ‘Flow’ arrows on floor to signal proper movement pattern through car.) Bikes would be secured on their own, freeing bikers’ hands; bikers could choose to sit on their bikes, saving floor space during rush hour; leaning bolsters against the sides of the cars would be a place for bikers to lean & read. Oh, and overflow non-bikers could squeeze in also.
While we’re at it, I’d love to see improved street-to-platform design features for bikes. How about bicycle ramps built into steps?! You know, a 2″ strip on the side of the steps that your wheels fit into so you can push a bike up the steps rather than carrying it. How about extending that groove all the way back through the wide turnstile and out to the curb? How about a bike lane leading up to a ‘dismount’ area, and the bike groove starting in the dismount area and ending on the platform??
That way it’s very clear to everyone where the bikes are going, organizing traffic flow through the station and reducing confusion!
(I DO understand why bikes aren’t allowed on escalators – tried it once & it didn’t seem safe; if you don’t know EXACTLY what you’re doing, it’s easy to mess it up. Don’t want a fallen biker inducing logjams at the top of an escalator!)
None of these are expensive solutions – they just require a little planning. Let’s get to it!
Why, if there were no “disasters”, did the BART board not continue the pilot, or better yet, remove the blackout entirely? What is this mysterious “data” that they need to analyze?
Agreed. There is no reason for this stall. The space issues, long cited as a cause for the ban, proved manageable. NYC has managed them for years.
Some discount the August data as “off season”. If that’s a concern, then the board should have extended the pilot through the fall. They didn’t and now the board can cite that as a reason to stall further.
Even more perplexing is the lack of outcry from local bicycle coalitions. The board has been allowed to conduct this pilot with no milestones and no timeline for a permanent decision. Consequently, there’s no way to hold BART accountable for their inaction.
If you support bicycles on BART at all times, the following pages have been setup on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook. Please follow one to send BART a message:
Google+:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/117136572262996073790/posts
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/bikesonbart
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/BikesOnBart
I would like to see BART having a more comprehensive understanding of the challenges of traffic, obesity, and air quality in our Bay Area. Having cyclists on board addresses all 3, and more.
Here’s a cut and paste from the Air Quality web site:
The single most important action you can tIake to improve air quality in the Bay Area is to reduce your driving. Vehicles on Bay Area roads account for more than half of the air pollution in the region.
Commute to work in a more environmentally sound manner – by carpooling, casual carpooling, vanpooling, taking transit, biking, or walking.
[…] can be brought on at all times, though there’s not always space. BART, which recently concluded a month-long experiment letting commuters bring their bicycles onboard during rush hour on Fridays, bans bikes during morning and evening rush […]
[…] tested a similar pilot program during commute hours last August to mixed survey results. You can read Oakland North’s previous coverage about how […]
[…] tested a similar pilot program during commute hours last August to mixed survey results. You can read our sister site Oakland North’s previous coverage […]