Caltrain bicycle rider arrested yesterday
A Caltrain bicycle rider was taken off a train and subsequently arrested yesterday morning. The details are still murky, and we’ll do the best we can to get them as soon as possible, but expect this to ratchet up already-high tensions on Caltrain significantly.
The ‘bikes on Caltrain’ situation has been brewing for a long time now.
A Caltrain rider, who may have been standing on the platform, caught some video footage of the arrest:
The stop was allegedly the San Mateo Caltrain stop - the police were called while the train was in motion - I’m not sure why. When then train arrived at the station, the police were waiting and pulled the rider off. We don’t have his name yet. He had what sounded like an UK accent.
The guy who was arrested was putting his bike on as another person was taking his bike off and the conductor told the guy not to put his bike on, but he did anyway. So, I’m not sure if the train actually moved from the place where the guy originally boarded - it wouldn’t make much sense, unless the conductor just wanted to keep the train moving, and have the police meet them at a later stop. I could see a situation where the guy getting on the train with his bike thought that the conductor just didn’t see the other person getting off the train, therefore the conductor might not have known another slot was open.
There’s some discussion going on back and forth until one of the officers starts talking about the guy getting his bike off the train, which he then attempts to do, but the officer doesn’t like it and commands him to not get on the train. He then tells the guy to step away from the train - to ’stand over there’. And ‘do you want to be stupid?,’ and ‘do you want to go to jail?.’ The man steps back and is guarded by another officer. The first officer gets onto the train, grabs the man’s bookbag, and tosses it on the ground outside the train. The officer who tossed the bag on the ground walks away for a couple of seconds, then comes back and approaches the man and starts to place him under arrest. The man says, “What am I being arrested for?” The officer replies, “Delaying the train.”
Contact information and a feedback form for Caltrain at this site:
Caltrain Contact Information:
Caltrain Customer Service Line 800.660.4287 (Weekdays: 6:00am - 10:00pm / Weekends: 8:00am - 8:00pm) 510.817.1717
Administrative offices (8:00am - 5:30pm): 650.508.6200
Information for hearing impaired (TTY): 650.508.6448
…It seems the arresting officers were the ‘Caltrain Transit Police‘, who are deputies of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office. There is only one officer on duty at the moment and he may or may not be able to call me back.
…I’ve emailed two other San Mateo County officials — Marshall Wilson, Public Communications Manager, and Sheriff Greg Munks. It’s still only 7:04 AM Friday morning.
…The text accompanying the video says this:
Biker gets on train, finds available spot in bike rack (3 bikes were on rack, sign says capacity is 4). Conductor tells biker that train is full, demands he get off. Biker refuses. Police meet train at San Carlos station, biker arrested. For more info, email <email_address_deleted>
…More hearsay - there may have been an empty rack on the train in plain sight, but the conductor seemed to know/believe there were already 16 bikes on the train (that particular train car), so he just told the rider to get off, without explaining that there were already the maximum number of allowed bikes on board.
Down at the 22nd St Caltrain stop, I spoke to one Caltrain bike commuter who said that he never had a problem with Caltrain and never got bumped. But he also said that the conductors sometimes ‘act like assholes’ and he got the idea that conductors didn’t like bicyclists that much.
I spoke to a conductor at 22nd street who didn’t know anything about the arrest yesterday.
I rode down to the 4th and King St. Caltrain stop (first/last/downtown stop in SF) and talked to a conductor there. He said he regularly lets as many bikers can on as he can, but when they hit the limit, it becomes a safety hazard and he has to keep some bikers off sometimes, by law - ‘a federal offense’. Those 1,000 people on board the train were his responsibility, he said, and he didn’t want anyone - bicyclist or otherwise - distracting him from doing his job of getting people from Point A to Point B safely.
When I asked him if arresting people on Caltrain was normal procedure, as opposed to just ticketing them, he said, “Yes - we only ticket people for fare-jumping. If someone is not listening to what we tell them to do, and it’s a safety hazard, we’re calling the police and they’re coming to arrest the person.” He gave the impression that arrests were not an everyday thing, but that they do happen. He said there were other minor infractions which would not earn one an arrest - such as riding on the platform. In that case, this particular conductor would just not allow you to board. I asked if the fold-up bikes counted as bikes and he said, ‘No’ - they’re just like pieces of luggage. He said if there is someone on the train who has a fold-up bike who is in the bike car and has not folded it up, he’ll ask that person to fold it up and move so that another bicyclist can board the train.
I asked the conductor, if he were made ‘Caltrain God’ tomorrow, what would he do to fix the problem — he said, “I don’t know.” He suggested he might look at getting different train cars. The bikes racks inside the Bombardiers are not good for bikes, he said - but he’d seen train cars that could fit a lot more bikes than the Caltrain rail cars, so he’d try to use those. I asked him what he thought of the bike riders vs. other types of riders - were bike riders ‘just a pain in the ass’ I asked. He said, “They’re part of the transportation scheme just like anybody else, and that’s how I treat them. And that means they have to follow the rules just like anybody else.” I asked if it was just possible to add more rail cars — ‘how difficult is that?’ — he said ‘we can barely keep the 96 cars we got running — we are out of equipment’ (see the ‘Adding Cars’ section here).
…[Update] Got a callback from Christine Dunn, spokesperson for Caltrain/SamTrans (Thank you, Christine.), and got some good info. We don’t know the name of the gentleman who was arrested. SFBB does not plan on trying to finding his name out. He was arrested and then released - so it’s possible he could have been at work by lunch. He probably still had to make a trip ‘downtown’ - to the station, for booking.
He was charged with ‘Interfering or delaying a train crew’ - I’ve got a call into the Sheriff’s Office to try to figure out the statute number so we can look up the text of it online.
Whether to arrest the person or not is largely up to the conductor’s discretion.
Contrary to one of my opening characterizations of the situation — “The ‘bikes on Caltrain’ situation has been brewing for a long time now.” — Christine said that after checking with the customer service department and a couple of other places, this ‘brewing’ (an increasing tension over bike on Caltrain), did not, in fact, seem to be taking place. I suspect it’s possible that is the case, but I hear stories more often, it seems, about people getting bumped, and even the general knowledge of something called ‘bumping’ seems to be growing. And we know bicycle ridership in general continues to go up because there are more bicyclists all over town, it seems. Folks who were never bumped before - and the first time is not a pleasant experience - those riders finally start to understand what all those other folks feel who, because of the times and locations they tend to catch Caltrain, have been subject to getting bumped for a long time, now - an extremely frustrating experience from what I’ve heard. I heard of these stories some more at TransitCamp, too (which I’ve yet to write up, yet). It’s very possible that I just don’t have any sort of objective measure to know about possible ‘rising tensions’ - I’ve been paying closer attention to all this stuff lately, so that could be an explanation for why I was thinking things were getting worse. Christine did mention that Caltrain did have a ‘tough summer’ with fewer cars for trains, etc. Have things been better since the summer? Fewer bumps lately, folks?
I did find out that some Caltrain reps were at TransitCamp - somehow I missed that piece of information before. That’s good to know - that was a great experience (initial write-up).
I also wonder if biker-Caltrain folks were letting Caltrain know that these frustrations existed. I tend to get preachy on this, but I figure someone has to keep harping on it - if you want to see changes, you have to pick up the phone, you have to make that call. Email and support forms are fine, but the phone seems to be the best way to get your point across, for a number of reasons. Yes, it’s somewhat inconvenient, but many of us have cellphones, so put Caltrain and BART and MUNI and the Mayor’s Office and the Governor’s Office and your State Assembly-person’s office and your local representative’s office on speed dial and make it happen. (Just don’t call while you’re driving.) You can dial from the platform, while you’re walking, whatever. I do it.
There’s an upcoming board meeting this next Thursday, October 2nd. The board will officially sign off on the Bicycle Access and Parking Plan. There have been changes made to the plan due to customer feedback.
Of particular note, the first draft of the ‘Innovations’ chapter suggested congestion pricing that would charge people to bring bikes on board during peak times, but because of negative public reaction/feedback and the difficulty in administering such a program, that idea was nixed.
Three things of note are included in the plan - goals for what Caltrain will attempt to accomplish:
1. Real-time information.
- a. Some way of knowing how many bike cars there would be on any given train in advance - committed to looking into, to studying, and to getting funding for a study.
- b. And a much more complicated/ambitious system goal - real-time information for where train cars were and how many bike cars were on a particular train in real-time, while you are waiting on the platform. This is something I heard the Google Transit team express interest in at TransitCamp.
2. Bike-sharing — it came up at meetings we had - it came from bike riders. I mentioned that this was my personal favorite solution, but I don’t really do the bikes-on-Caltrain thing that often, and have never been bumped, so it doesn’t count for much coming from me. I remember John Pucher discussing this type of solution that seems to work well in Europe - in the example he spoke of, folks in the suburbs would ride their bikes to the bus station, lock up, ride the bus to somewhere closer to work, hop off and grab another bike and get to their final destination. Easy.
3. Subsidy program for folding bikes — There is no restriction for folding bikes on Caltrain cars. Looking at some type of program that might somehow subsidize purchase of folding bikes for interested riders. Folding bikes are, apparently, generally more expensive than non-folding bikes. I tried a folding bike the other day for the first time - they’re cool. The folding bike worked, it was comfortable. Seemed fine. Go to a bike shop and try it out. Warm Planet bikes down at the 4th and King Caltrain station has a bunch - in fact, that may be all they sell.
This new, ‘final draft’ version of the plan is not online online yet — it will be posted with the board packet early next week. I’ll make sure to make a new post when it’s available.
Christine said that Caltrain has historically had a very good thing going with the bike community, and the really hoped to continue that and saw no reason way that should not be the case going forward.
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September 26th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
As a Caltrain locomotive engineer (formerly a conductor) I really hope something is done soon to resolve this issue. Every day more and more people bring bicycles onto the trains as ridership continues to increase. I have seen my fair share of “asshole” bicyclists, and I have also worked with my fair share of “asshole” conductors. However, most cyclists are friendly, follow the rules, and proactively organize themselves (entraining/detraining) in order to help keep the trains on time. Most conductors are friendly and regularly bend the rules by allowing extra bikes on board in order to let people get to work or get home on time.
The biggest problem here, causing the most friction, is the issue of bike capacity on the Bombardier cars, which, as you know, is only half that of the gallery cars. It would be one thing if the Bombardier cars consistently showed up only on certain trains, and everybody knew which trains would have limited capacity, but things are exacerbated by the fact that Bombardier car consists and gallery car consists seem to be swapped at random from one day to the next. You never know how much space for bikes there will be on any given train on any given day. (Bike capacity on a train can swing from 64 spaces one day to 16 the next.) This has disastrous effects, and it’s incomprehensible that Caltrain can’t seem to wrap their collective heads around it.
BACKGROUND
When Caltrain first received the Bombardier cars (in preparation for Baby Bullet service), the fleet consisted of 17 cars — 7 cab-cars (cars with a cab at one end from which the engineer can operate the train in “push” mode) and 10 “trailer” cars (just regular coaches). Keeping with their past practice with the gallery cars, Caltrain decided to designate the new Bombardier cab-cars as bike cars.
Possibly due to new FRA or PUC regulations, the design of the onboard bike racks had to be different from those on the gallery cars. Also, Caltrain wanted to keep seating in the area where the racks were, so cyclists could be seated downstairs to keep an eye on their bikes. As a consequence, only 16 bikes (4 racks of 4) were allowed on Bombardier bike cars.
So for a while we had 7 Bombardier bike cars. Out of the fleet of 17 cars, three 5-car trains were made, leaving two cars as “spares” to be rotated in and out of consists as needed. This meant that Caltrain’s Bombardier-equipped trains were almost always made up of 3 trailer cars and 2 cab (bike) cars. Having 2 bike cars per train resulted in having room for 32 bikes, equal to the bike capacity of a gallery car consist with a single bike car. It seemed to work pretty well.
Pretty well, that is, until the Baby Bullet trains, which predominantly used Bombardier cars, began getting so popular that soon many of the trains reached “standing room only” conditions, where every seat was filled. This was, I believe, in 2005, before Caltrain rolled out their 96 train schedule which added more Baby Bullet trains. So at the time, their only solution was to rip out bike racks and put seats back in. And that’s exactly what they did to 2 of the Bombardier cab-cars.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what that did to bike capacity on Bombardier-equipped trains. We still had 7 cab-cars, but now only 5 of them were also bike cars. (For those who are wondering, it’s cab-cars 117 and 118 which no longer have bike racks.) This meant we now had three 5-car trains. One of them always had 2 bike cars, and usually the other two only had one bike car (occasionally one of those trains would also have a second bike car, depending on which “spare” cars were swapped in/out of the consist).
So, one day your train shows up with space for 32 bikes, and the next it shows up with space for 16 bikes. That’s a problem. But many bicyclists found that if they simply avoided taking the Baby Bullet trains, it’s a problem they didn’t have to deal with.
Enter the 96- (and later, 98-) train schedule. Adding this many new trains required completely revamping the “consist turns”, basically turning the equipment at each end of the line as quickly as possible during rush hour in order to physically operate more trains. Doing that meant that, oftentimes, Bombardier equipment would end up on local/limited trains rather than the Baby Bullets. So much for avoiding Bullets to dodge the bike capacity problem. At this point the inconsistency of bike capacity on any given train became very aggravating, for passengers and crews alike. Ridership continued to grow by leaps and bounds during this period, and “bumping” became more frequent, as did “negative cyclist/conductor interactions”. But since there were more trains running during the “peak” than before, standing room only conditions largely subsided, with the exception of a couple isolated trains.
CRACKED BOLSTERS
Then… catastrophe. In May of 2008, cracks were discovered on the truck bolsters (the part of the car that connects the wheels/suspension to the frame) of 14 gallery cars, and those cars were immediately pulled from service. Consists were completely reshuffled in an attempt to ease the pain of reduced seating capacity. One entire gallery-car set was broken up, its cars dispersed to other gallery car sets to make up for cars they had lost. Everything else in the yard with wheels, whether it had something wrong with it or not (excluding the bolster cracks, obviously) was pressed into service. To replace the set of gallery cars which had been broken up and dispersed, the Bombardier consists were also broken up. Instead of three 5-car sets they built four 4-car sets, leaving only one spare car, a car which had been robbed for parts for several months to keep the rest of the fleet rolling. One of those Bombardier consists had 2 bike cars. Do the math and you can figure out that the other 3 each had only 1 bike car.
So now we had 3 consists running around which only had room for 16 bikes. Guess how that affected cyclist/conductor relations?
THE INEVITABLE HAPPENS
Well, one day (as happens from time to time), something happened to one of the Bombardier cab-cars. Specifically, it’s wheels had developed flat spots that exceeded maximum allowable limits. It was removed from its consist one night and replaced with the lone spare cab-car, which had been quickly patched up and made ready for service. What nobody noticed until the next morning when the train went into service was that THE TRAIN NOW HAD NO BIKE CAR. The spare was car #117, one of those cab-cars which had its bike racks ripped out just a couple years prior. As you can well imagine, it was a stellar day for Caltrain customer service.
Ripping the bike racks out of two of the Bombardier cab-cars has proven to be a shortsighted move (made unnecessary by the later schedule increase) which has caused equipment utilization headaches and eventually, as I thought it might, led to a train going into service with no bike car.
BIKE CARS: A NEW HOPE?
Caltrain is in the middle of a delivery of 8 brand new Bombardier cars — 2 cab-cars and 6 trailers. So far, 4 of the trailers have been delivered, so it is as yet unknown whether or not the 2 cab-cars will be equipped with bike racks. If they are, then hoorah! But more needs to be done. At the bare minimum, The 2 new cab-cars should be made into bike cars, and the two older Bombardier cars which had their bike racks removed should have them reinstalled! There is simply no excuse now, as seated capacity on the trains is growing with the addition of the 8 new cars.
A FRESH LOOK AT BIKES ON BOARD
But like I said, that should be the bare minimum. What Caltrain really needs to do is take a long look at how bikes are accommodated on board the trains, and do some things to improve the service for all concerned.
Caltrain has lately been pointing out that increasing numbers of bicyclists are accountable for much of the decline in on-time performance over the last year. From my point of view in the cab, I tend to agree. But the bicyclists are not the problem; the way Caltrain accommodates them is. We are trying to cram 32 bikes into the gallery cars. A dozen off at Mountain View, 20 more on. 9 off at Palo Alto, 15 more on. Do you know how long that takes? A single door, multiple steps to contend with? Stop after stop after stop. A second bike car is a godsend on busy trains.
Boarding goes much smoother on the Bombardier cars, in part due to their more limited capacity, but even if they could hold 32 bikes boarding would still be quicker due to the second door and fewer steps. Still, I don’t think the answer is to increase bike capacity on the Bombardier cars which already have it. We’d still end up waiting for bikes to get aboard while all the other cars in the train have long finished boarding and detraining passengers.
SPREAD THE LOAD
I contend that the load of bicycles should be spread throughout the whole train, rather than trying to cram all of the bikes into one car. Yes, the cab-cars should still be the cars with the most bike capacity (but less than 32 bikes, for safety and station dwell time reasons), and the rest of the cars should all have space for a modest amount of bikes. Maybe 8 bikes each. This way, dwell time decreases, and each train’s bike capacity actually INCREASES, (by how much depends on train length), despite the fact that I propose decreasing the cab-car capacity from 32 to, perhaps, 24 bikes.
Increase Bombardier cab-car bike capacity from 16 to 24, and add bike capacity (8) to all of the Bombardier trailers as well.
Do that, and then no matter what kind of train shows up at the station, bike capacity is a function of how LONG the train is rather than what manufacturer happened to build the cars. Bike capacity would be within a small range of a certain percentage of total passenger capacity no matter how long the train is. Train getting crowded? Add a car! Seated capacity AND bike capacity both increase! It’s a no-brainer.
ISSUES
Of course this isn’t some sort of miracle cure; there is a major stumbling block. Right now, bikes are limited to a single car (or at most, 2 cars) for a very practical reason: the conductors need to be able to monitor how many bikes are on the train in order to make sure that capacity isn’t exceeded, for safety and regulatory reasons. If bikes were allowed on all cars, as I propose, it would be almost impossible to do that. Some cooperation and self-policing by the cyclists would definitely be needed.
Despite that problem, I think it could be a workable solution. The status quo certainly will not do, and bikes-on-board is an important, valuable program that must be allowed to continue. Here’s hoping that something is done soon.
September 26th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Thanks Engineer - probably the most informative comment I’ve ever read on any blog anywhere.