It's not posted at the stops, it's not on the schedule where the other bike rules are, but apparently 2 bikes is the limit per car?
Today I had to politely suffer thru a 15 minute rant from a driver who "let" me bring 3 bicycles (and my 10yr old and his friend) onto a train that was entirely devoid of other riders.
Is this a new reg? We've done this a bunch of times before with no grief from the driver, and loads of commuters.
I wonder if they're getting this from the two-bike limit on buses because the racks only hold two bicycles.
I got thrown off a bus one time with the unicycle (even though every other driver in Ross Division at the time recognized me and asked where the unicycle was if I didn't have it), and this was traced to the rule that you couldn't put a unicycle on the front bike rack.
I suspect that something similar is happening here.
Maybe it's the same operator who was giving sprite hassles about her folder, and now he's just being a giant beeatch.
Don't kill someone. There's a good rule. Only 2 bikes on an empty train, not 3? who the f cares? People amaze me, and not is a good way.
The "We like bikes" brochure mentions the two bike limit:
T
All T routes (42S, 47L, 47S and 52). Off-peak periods,
seven days a week. Prohibited weekdays from 6-9 am
and 4-6:30 pm. Two bikes permitted per LRV.
But the current Red Line schedule makes no mention of the limit in the bike section.
Arbitrary limits. I hate them. No wiggle room for reason. This rule was obviously decided around a table in a conference room with no cyclists present, either staff or invited.
The upside: Rules are ink and paper, and thus changeable.
look on the bright side, this driver saying a two bike limit is a step forward from last week when he was saying no bikes.
i kid, but i'm having a bad day so i'm looking for silver linings.
how about this to cheer you up erok, when we split ways the other night I decided to ride back the long way and go up the jail trail. Popped a tire right before the trail and didn't have a MTB tube or a patch kit in my bag.
I only had a quarter in my pocket and the cell phone was dead so I just rode that fucker with a flat the whole way to Greenfield. It was like biking through quicksand and I almost just slept in the woods.
Scott the same thing used to happen to me many times when I lived in mt Lebanon. My girlfriend and I would go to get on the train with our bikes and if someone was already on it the driver would tell us only one could ride. Then there was another driver that would make one of us stand at the front of the train and one at the rear. Most of the time this was on a train that was pretty empty. That same guy made a guy and his rather younger kid separate on the train one day too. I wasn't on my bike that day so I was ok, but the kid was only about 9 and was kinda scared being alone in the back. I think he felt like he did something wrong. The dad was talking to the driver but the driver told him if he didn't like it they could both get off the train. I spoke to the man and told him I would call and file a compliant as soon as I got home. My girlfriend went back and kept the kid company in till we got to their stop. All in all it was a pretty shitty situation for those folks and I'm sure that was the last time this fella took his son down to ride on the bike trails, on the train that is.
The more we promote cycling in the S Hills, the bigger a problem this is going to be.
I can see limiting it to two bikes during rush hour on crowded trains, but outside of that, I don't know why they need a limit at all.
I saw three 14yo kids bring their bikes on the T one June evening, and aside from advising them to keep the aisles clear, the driver had no problem with them, nor did anyone else. They rode from Potomac all the way to Station Square.
Thanks for the feedback everyone. I find it a little funny that the only place we can find the printed rule is on the "We like bikes" brochure. Clearly, there is more work to do here.
From my (way too long) conversation with the driver, I was told that bikes are to be placed only in the wheelchair spot, after folding up the seat there...one located in the front of the train, one in the back. (And if there's a wheelchair on the train, they get dibs on that spot, which I'm fine with, of course.)
The result of this is two things: 1. For a father-son bike outing to involve a train, it means I'd need to leave my son unattended at the opposite end of the vehicle. And while the kindness Wille and his gf provided is to be commended, I don't think I'd want to count on finding it.
2. This rule also means that one of us would have to roll our bike through the entire length of the train car to reach the designated parking space... so you have to essentially be a dick to everybody else on the train, especially to someone in the aisle.
This baffles me. Why not pull out a few seats in the back, and designate a bike area? If there's no bikes, people can still stand there - and heck, in this case it would increase the capacity of the car.
How did it work on Car-Free-Friday in the S. Hills? More that 2 bikes per empty train must have been anarchy!!!
There has been times when the driver of the train made me put my bike in the wheel chair area and people where already sitting there. I really felt like a dick when I had to ask them to move so I could put up the seat and stand there with my bike.
