Chesterton Tribune

 

 

NICTD board member fed up with delays in allowing bikes on trains

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By KEVIN NEVERS

If accommodating bicycles on the South Shore commuter line’s train cars were easy, it would have been done by now.

But in fact a unique variety of operating characteristics makes a bikes-allowed policy on South Shore trains a pretty challenging thing to craft.

That was the take-away from Quandel Consultants’ presentation at Friday morning’s meeting of the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District’s Board of Directors. In the end, Quandel recommended what it called a “market-based alternative” which wouldn’t be implemented until 2021 and then only as a five-year pilot program.

A six-year wait, however, one board member found unacceptable. Mike Repay, a Lake County representative, signaled his intention to present at the board’s next meeting, July 31, a bikes-allowed policy which would take effect immediately.

The board took no action at Friday’s meeting but General Manager Michael Noland did express some degree of concern over the prospect of permitting bikes on trains prematurely.

Begin with Quandel’s assessment of the difficulties posed to bicyclists by South Shore’s operating characteristics, the most obvious one being a lack of structural uniformity from train to train and from station to station: a mix of high and low boarding platforms, 11 high and seven low; of platform lengths, 13 of them as long as a full train--eight cars--and six of them shorter; of train car types, the more common single-level cars and the newer bi-level gallery cars; and of row configurations, with a pair of seats on either side of the center aisle in some cars and an asymmetrical 2-3 seating arrangement in other cars.

This lack of uniformity means that designing a uniform bikes-allowed policy would entail finding a way around the delays caused by bicyclists’ lugging their rides up and down the steps at low-level platforms; of moving bikes within a car in which a 2-3 configuration leaves an aisle so narrow that handlebars will be encroaching on the sitting passengers’ personal space at roughly head level; and of transporting bikes between incompatible cars (it can’t actually be done), Quandel said.

On top of those challenges is this one, Quandel added: there would really only be room in any given car to store two bikes, and only by removing ADA seating.

In the end Quandel settled on these policy criteria: no regular seats would be removed to accommodate bikes due to ridership volumes; no ADA seating would be sacrificed either on single-level cars; bikers would only be permitted to board and exit a train at high full-length platforms; and bikes would not be permitted on any train in the peak direction during weekday rush hour.

Those criteria prompted Quandel to eliminate one alternative immediately: the “off-peak, any-train, any-station” policy, which not only would have required a squaring of the circle of the policy criteria but would also have left a maximum of only 16 bikes per train--two per eight cars--deemed by Quandel an insufficient storage capacity for the expected weekend demand.

The recommendation which Quandel finally did make on Friday was a “market-based alternative”: four trains per day on weekends and holidays from April through October--a westbound and an eastbound in the morning and the same in the afternoon--would each have two dedicated bike cars each capable of accommodating 30 bikes.

The five bike cars--the fifth would be a spare--would be retrofitted from single-level cars due to be retired in 2020, when a series of bi-level gallery cars are due to be introduced. The policy would actually take effect the next year, in 2021, under a five-year pilot program. Estimated cost over those five years: $9,899,181, including the expense of the retrofit, bike car inspection and maintenance, train crew costs, and Metra district payments.

Tired of Waiting

For board member Repay the six-year wait to put a bikes-allowed policy into effect might as well be a lifetime. The board should implement some form of the policy “immediately,” he said, with a high degree of confidence that, however tricky it might seem on paper, in the real world “it’s in the bikers’ interests to make this work.”

Repay himself, furthermore, has no undue fears over delays caused by the physical effort of boarding and exiting trains with bike in hand, inasmuch as bicyclists almost by definition are fit enough to carry their rides up or down the steps with ease, he said.

Repay promised his colleagues that he will be bringing a bikes-allowed policy of his own to their next meeting.

Noland, on the other hand, made no secret of his concerns. While stating plainly his belief that there “absolutely” is a demand for a bikes-allowed policy, Noland couldn’t quite see his way clear of the South Shore’s operational oddities. “If we’re going to do this, we need to do this right,” he said.

Instead, an immediate bikes-allowed policy would almost certainly lead to “tremendous conflicts” between bicyclists and the other passengers. And between bicyclists and train crew members. “We have a ton of luggage on our trains,” Noland noted, and at peak periods “we might not be able to meet capacity demands.”

And what about those occasions when, owing to space considerations, a conductor bumps a bicyclist--or at least his bike--from the return trip? “It would be a pain to get the bike back,” Noland suggested.

“So people with luggage are okay but people with bikes are not okay?” Repay pressed Noland. “Parents with two kids and those giant strollers are okay but people with bikes aren’t?”

Porter County Commissioner John Evans, R-North--and the boards chair--looked into the future at this point, peering over Noland’s shoulder, and saw something he apparently didn’t much care for. “The train crews already have a tough job,” Evans remarked. “Let’s not make them referees.”

The discussion ended there, unresolved.

The board’s next step is to schedule a public open house on the Quandel recommendation, probably in June. At some point after that, the consultants will prepare and submit their final technical report.

 

Posted 6/1/2015

 
 
 
 

 

 

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