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 board’s
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.