San Francisco Bike Blog

While perusing the SFBC website I stumbled upon some information on a cool, new-ish ‘bike ramp’ at the 16th Street BART station. The BART website has some video:

Here’s the BART description of the bike ramp:

Bicycling to and from BART is a great way to get around the Bay Area, but let’s face it, hauling your bike up and down station stairs is a hassle and rules prohibit you from taking bikes on the escalators.  That’s why many cyclists are excited by this new prototype bike ramp at 16th Street Mission Station.  The wheel is guided up or down the stairs and the ramp takes the weight off your shoulders.  It’s also safer - no more wheels swinging out of control as you struggle on the staircase.  There are two ramps at 16th Street Mission.  Make sure you use the ramp marked up or down, depending on where you’re headed.  The “Transportation for Clean Air Fund” and BART provided money to develop and build the new ramp.  So, please, give it a spin!  For more on bikes and BART, visit www.bart.gov.  Jim Allison, BARTtv News.

I have to give it a solid thumbs up. Then again, I think that was the first time I ever brought my bike down into a BART station, so I don’t have a good comparison for how much of a pain it might have been to carry it down into, and more importantly, out of the station. I have carried my bike up and down other, usually smaller, sets of stairs, and with that I can say that sometimes it felt a bit odd.

Pushing the bike up the stairs seemed pretty normal - the only minor annoyance was that the front tire tended to ‘climb the wall’ of the track - because it had that rubberized/grippy surface. So I’d have to occasionally steer the front wheel back to the heart of the groove of the track.

Going down actually seemed a bit weird - maybe even dangerous? That whole gravity thing had the weight of the bike wanting to drag me down the stairs. So you have to use your upper body to pull the bike back, which means you have to have at least one of your feet pushed out in front of you - to push backwards/up, instead of directly underneath you. Even weighing in at 195 or so, with a not-too-heavy single-speed (coaster-brake) bike, I had to make sure the bike didn’t pull me down the stairs. I imagine if it was rainy - or worse, icy - I would have to be extra careful. If I was just a smaller person (read: in shape) - and had a lower bodyweight to bike-weight ratio - I would have had to been extra-extra careful. You have to watch where you step while keeping the bike at the correct placement to your body - not too far out in front.

So, the bike ramp is probably a good thing, in general. Using the bike ramp to go up (climb out of the station) is double-plus good. Using the bike ramp to submerge down into the station seems a bit less than ideal. I’d be curious to hear what other folks think.

If you try it out, BART is (was at one time?) looking for feedback:

BART’s looking for feedback on how the ramps work. Would you like to see these in BART station’s throughout the Bay Area? Give ‘em a roll and email Laura Timothy.

Below are a few more pics.

Overview of the ramp

Entrance to the bike ramp

Rolling in

Cool sprockets design

Instruction sign

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