"What we came away with is a lot less than what people would like," concedes Andy Thornley, the program director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.
Tired of being bumped off Caltrains with full bike cars -- and legions of empty seats -- Thornley and his fellow activists have been lobbying the trains system for more than a year leading up to yesterday's San Carlos meeting. The Bicycle Coalition's plan was bold: It called for two bicycle cars per train, each of which would be revamped to hold 40 bicycles. But that's not what Caltrain opted to do.
Instead, the rail system decided to augment its conventional gallery cars to allow them to carry 40 bikes instead of 32, and upgrade its newer Bombardier cars (that's the name of the company) to allow 24 bikes instead of 16.
This is an interesting counterpoint to the video I posted last week from British Transport Films in 1955 on bike touring and trains:
I wonder if the British transport ever figured out the issue with flexibility and capacity. Perhaps their system, which is clearly seen in the opening moments of the video above, held enough bikes in one that they didn't have a capacity problem?
