What does the future hold for bike commuters? A couple months ago, I created a petition designed to give that very train rider group, a voice. Many asked for a bike-designated car, inclusion of bicyclists during peak hours, as well as increasing general space on every car for cyclists. All of these are interrelated to environmental concerns, the fluctuating price of gasoline, and a desire for more healthy and affordable lifestyles within the Bay Area. Since I’ve only promoted the petition within my own cycling community, I fear it excludes non-racers, and a majority of the general commuting population. With that said, I am a regular commuter myself and don’t really see a lot of community events or clubs organized together in that respect. Please feel free to comment if you have ideas about how these people can be reached, and given an opportunity to share their opinion.
I’ve attended a couple of meetings (click for podcast) designed to address these concerns, which bring together representatives from various advocacy groups and BART officials. In the last two meetings, the agenda has included items on bike lockers, escalators, and C-Car renovations which include bikes in the wheelchair and luggage categories for space usage. It sounds like there may be a future for bike access during commute hours, as well as more bike station parking space, if funding goes through. The bike station funding needs to be matched by the city organizations for BART to continue to delegate funds towards it, and Berkeley Bicycle Sub Committee has their meeting this thursday to discuss this item (see section 5.b. via link). There was a bit more tension in the room as compared to the previous meeting, and it seems as though BART needs some positive encouragement from the public in order to acknowledge and continue in the right direction. EBBC is really pushing for permission of bicyclists to use the escalators, and helping BART to promote their locker campaign. I’m not sure who is behind the peak commute hours expansion for cyclist inclusion campaign, but I am glad its getting some attention.
In the presentation, I grabbed a sampling of comments from 406 Rick Jones, 430 Jeffrey Osborne, 470 Seth Goddard, 537 Anonymous, and 583 Nathan Shaffer. Here’s the statistics from the petition with 592 signatures:
Comment Votes %total
| 1. Access during commute hours |
122 |
23% |
| 2. Environmental/health impact |
94 |
17% |
| 3. Growing cycling community/gas prices |
90 |
17% |
| 4. More space, bike racks, hooks on trains |
65 |
12% |
| 5. Bike-friendly car |
55 |
10% |
| 6. Safety and convenience |
52 |
10% |
| 7. Increasing general ridership |
42 |
8% |
| 8. Bike parking improvements |
13 |
2% |
| 9. More bike gates |
6 |
1% |
| 10. Escalators |
3 |
1% |
| Totals |
542 |
100% |
*thanks to Scott Mace for sharing his podcast of the meeting.