Where Are The Bike Racks?
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- July
- 26
This is the first of many columns from David Schloss, president of the Rockland Bike Club.
As a photographer, writer and educator I spend a lot of time in other cities across the country and across
the globe. In the last year I’ve been domestically to (at least), San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Ft. Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Boulder, Denver, Austin, Chicago, Boston and DC, and a variety of suburbs around those metropolises. Internationally I’ve been to Amsterdam, Belgium, Japan and the UK.
And in just about every place I’ve been the municipal buses have bike racks on the front. Simple to use, it takes just a few seconds to securely put a bike onto the rack and then hop onto mass transit. This is commonly referred to as “intermodal transportation” and it’s a key part of the transit infrastructure.
Only it’s a key part that we seem to be missing here in Rockland and Westchester. There are some buses with internal bike racks, but post-9/11 policies have them off limits to bikes due to security concerns.
But a front-mounted rack makes vastly more sense, they’re quicker, they’re easier to use, they don’t require the bus driver involve themselves with the operation of the storage, and they’re a great solution to intermodal transportation issues.
So why don’t we have them on our buses?
As the president of the Rockland Bicycling Club, I’d be happy to help spearhead an effort to get these purchased and installed on the buses (I’m sure there’s grant money available) and to help publicize their availability. It’s an idea that could increase the use of the buses in the region and reduce the use of single-occupancy cars (which is good for the bus revenues and the environment).
Have any ideas about where to start? Send some email to david@rocklandbike.org.
David, Thanks for writing. Please send David, your comments, but please post them here as well for all to share and comment on. When I lived in Greensboro, NC five years ago they had racks on the front bumper of transit buses and they got plenty of use, the same in Toronto.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, July 26th, 2008 at 7:23 AM by Randall Wolf. 
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The racks installed on 2 TOR buses served as “test racks”. Our DOPT has found that they are the wrong (read: unsuccessful) kind of racks for the intended application. It’s anticipated that the next purchase of buses for TOR’s fleet will come equipped with “built-in” racks, superior to the “test racks” and that are suited to the buses and to the application. ...Maybe we can learn the ETA for the new additions to the fleet?
I attempted to send David Schloss an e-mail but received a message that it was invalid address. I used the address from your article which stated david@rocklandbike.org.