Pedestrian Looking Out For Cyclists’ Interests
The San Jose Mercury News prints Letters to the Editor, and we have one Caltrain walk-on rider representing us cycling folks:
Make room
Editor - I have been a Caltrain walk-on passenger for over five years and am highly appreciative of this form of transportation on the Peninsula. I frequently recommend commuting by train to friends and colleagues. I am concerned, therefore, to learn that my cyclist friends are often denied access to the trains due to lack of bicycle space.
I take the bullet train every day during rush hour between Hillsdale and Mountain View and am always able to find a seat. I understand that Caltrain recently acquired eight new cars. I support converting all these new cars into bike cars, thereby providing space for those riders who cycle to and from the train.
I like riding on Caltrain and want to continue recommending it, but how can I do that for friends who are cyclists? Let’s make space for all riders on Caltrain.
JOY STEPHENSON, Mountain View
I would love to see a whole lot more of this - in both directions. It would be wonderful if we could find a way to foster a stronger sense of solidarity between cyclists and pedestrians. Imagine if 100 Caltrain walk-on riders sent emails to Caltrain to suggest exactly what Joy has suggested above? And imagine that 100 Caltrain cyclists did exactly the same the next time a primarily ‘walk-on’ situation needed to be addressed?
Thanks, Joy, for leading the way!
On that same topic, check out a cool photo of a bike commuter rail car in Boston.
Just what this photo represents is being debated over at BikePortland - like whether comparing this MBTA train to the Portland MAX light-rail train is an apples-to-apples comparison. The first thing that stood out for me was that the MBTA commuter rail does not allow bikes during rush hour, except for reverse commuting.
According to the photo-taker, this particular train is only employed on weekends, and in this particular instance, only one bicyclist used the racks, and the rest of the train seats were filled up with non-bike passengers - that is, by the time they reached their destination. That factoid may or may not be particularly significant, but there it is.
The picture looks really cool, and the setup seems to make more sense than the ’stacking’ configuration we use on Caltrain, where up to three or more bikes get stuck under the stack, bikes need to be shuffled, we have to use some antiquated tagging system just to try to keep track of things, newbie riders have no idea what is going on, the destination tags only make sense when you’re going to the same place all the time, etc.
In all of the drama surrounding the bikes-on-board issue with Caltrain, I can’t help but think it could have been averted somehow–and I’ll admit right off the top that I could be flat wrong on this, as I’ve been flat wrong on many (most?) things. I keep seeing mediation services pop up in the news - for neighbors who can’t get along, for rows between cyclists and pedestrians, whatever. At some point, things get out of hand, and folks get entrenched - there’s too much noise and emotion in the system. Mediators break that down. But we don’t even necessarily need a mediator - if we can get a few key people together to just sit down and hash out a compromise, we could fix this problem in a couple of hours - over brunch, let’s say, with some jazz, preferably. Know of a good place?
In some situations, there are clear conflicts of interest. For instance, in public policy, some folks favor more privatization while some prefer more government regulation - those goals often conflict. But in the case of bikes on board Caltrain, I don’t see inherent conflicts of interest. If Caltrain were incentivized to bump bike riders, then I could understand the current policies of bumping bike riders, but I don’t think that’s the case. So what is it? Maybe it’s just that Caltrain officials generally hate the idea of bikes on board? If that’s the case, then they would not be alone, but there’s got to be a middle ground, doesn’t there? Even if we agree to only temporarily accommodate more bikes on board until we get bike-sharing set up at the stations - let’s do it. Let’s do something. There are difficult problems in the world to solve - this is not one of them.
Let’s get one rep from each of the major stakeholders (Caltrain, SFBC, SVBC, walk groups, do we have a Caltrain rider advocacy organization?, etc.) to head to brunch this next Sunday and just solve it, and put this thing behind us. They come back and tell all of their respective governing bodies what they all agreed to - what compromise they reached - and that’s it - we can all go back about our business. Of course, Caltrain has to be willing to come to the table - they’re the power player in this whole deal. All discussions at the brunch are off the record, and it’s all very informal.
Here’s the thing to understand in political standoffs and ‘power negotiations’–as I see it–you have to give people a way to ‘walk it back’ with dignity. You ever have a fight with your significant other, and you kinda stepped over the a little bit (or a lot)? You didn’t leave yourself any wiggle room. Disaster. You wanted to walk it back, but you also didn’t want to hear, “See - I don’t know why you were being so stubborn. You should have just listened to me in the first place.” And so you don’t walk it back, at least initially, until things are blown way out of proportion and everything is a disaster. Well, we’ve reached that stage with bikes on board Caltrain situation. We had our first civil disobedience arrest over the issue, and though things have simmered down now, it should never have gotten this far. Only the players in the game know the full details of the situation, but if I was a bettin’ man, I’d guess that there was just too much bureaucracy, not enough face-to-face contact between the folks with the power to make things happen. People’s feelings go hurt and now we’ve all wasted time, money, and energy on something that could have been solved over a couple beers or bloody marys.
“There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.“
[p.s. The Forums are open for participation.]
