Caltrain bolstering on-board bike space

For those of you that live in California and use Caltrain, here is some great news!!

Caltrain crews soon will begin ripping out seats from their train cars to make room for more bicycle racks, the first in a series of moves intended to bolster capacity for frustrated bikers.

At a meeting Thursday the Caltrain Board of Directors authorized the "interim" solution to the problem of hundreds of bicyclists who get "bumped" (left at the station) whenever a train's bike racks are full.

The board decided that the number of bike racks in gallery cars should increase 25 percent from 32 to 40, while the number of racks in bombardier cars should soar 50 percent from 16 to 24. To free up space for the racks, the number of seats on the bottom floor of gallery cars should drop from 16 to eight and in bombardier cars from 19 to 11.

In all, the total available bike slots for the entire day should swell 28 percent from 4,000 to 5,152. During peak commute times there should be 27 percent more slots, for a total of 2,930.

A total of 272 seats will have been removed. Read the rest of the article at the Mercury News