Editor,
There has been some confusion on this page lately about the bike capacity increase that Caltrain electrification will make possible. Caltrain carries almost 6,000 bikes a day, which is more than any other rail system in the country, but just like Caltrain’s overall capacity, bike space is not sufficient to meet ridership demand.
With electrification, bike space will increase between 8.3 percent and 12.5 percent depending on the bike storage design that is chosen. Just like seated capacity, bike space will increase even though there are fewer bike slots per train. Why? There are two reasons. 1). There will be more trains. Electrification will add one more train/hour to the peak schedule, and 2). Electric trains can stop more frequently and still improve travel times. Since electric trains accelerate and decelerate more efficiently, stations receive more service and seats and bike spaces are utilized by a larger number of total riders.
Don’t get stuck on the number of spaces per train. In fact, the ratio of bikes to seats will be better on the electric trains than on the current diesel fleet. But, the real benefit is in the performance, and if you’re a cyclist, that means you’ll have more service options and less chance of being bumped.
Seamus Murphy
Chief communications officer, Caltrain
San Carlos
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(1) comment
Agree but only up to a point…which is the “near” future…the ‘far’ future is my point
The system in discussion does help tons, but at some point…it will become over populated according to the existing growth rate information. Both with the types of workers and the age of the majority of those ‘new’ workers
Am okay with the existing designs just to keep the ball rolling, but ask that the designers and demographic’ers keep the design space modular so that it can accommodate vertical racking. Current design wastes most of the vertical space above the horizontal rack systems.
But…why not just go a bit farther in design to just go with a higher density vertical bicycle rack design???
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