Shifting Gears: Bike Racks on Buses (Finally!)
Friday, April 20, 2007 5:53 PM
Jeff Harmon rides his bike 12 blocks from his downtown residence to his office every day.
The accountant dropped by METRO today to check out our new bike racks that are currently on 30 of our new hybrid buses and by year's end, on all our local buses. Passengers will be able to stow their bikes in the cargo bay of our Park & Ride buses.
"I think it's a great step forward," said Harmon, a member of Bike Texas. "It may encourage me to get out and try some routes further from home. We all need to do our little part to decrease pollution."
METRO announced today at a news conference in our lobby our Bikes-on-Buses program that allows commuters to load two bikes per bus on the front of our buses. Earlier, about 25 bikers rolled from METRO's Main Street headquarters to Senator Rodney Ellis' office where he and Councilwoman Carol Alvarado joined the bikers to ride back to METRO.
"It's about time," said Russell Browning, a zookeeper at the Houston Zoo and an avid biker, who pedals two and a half miles every day to work. "I'll use this to ride out west and ride on weekends."
These state-of-the-art bike racks made by Sportsworks are easy to operate. It took Harmon six seconds to load his bike with the rack already unfolded. I tried it - and it's a simple process of lifting the bike, placing it in labeled wheel slots, and then raising a support arm over the front tire. You squeeze the spring-loaded lock-in device over the tire.
James Strader, METRO's bike czar, said the bike racks have been tested in METRO's lots. "They're very safe," he said. "The bike won't go forward or backward. It will shake, but it won't shake enough to bounce out."
Each rack cost $1,580. It detaches easily for towing and can remain attached when the buses go through the car wash, said Strader. The racks are designed for bikes as small as 16 inches.
Woody Spear, president of BikeHouston, said Houston's biking community has waited a long time for the bike racks. "They're excellent," said Spears, who said he has appeared annually before the METRO board, asking for racks.
Spear said the public needs to be patient when it sees empty bike racks on buses and not criticize METRO for the lack of use. "It usually takes three to five years for the public to figure out how to work bikes into their modal of transportation," he pointed out.
Between 50,000 to 51,000 buses at transit agencies nationwide have bike racks on buses, said Virginia Miller, spokeswoman of the American Public Transportation Association.
Closer to home, Ft. Worth has had bike racks on buses for at least 15 years, said spokeswoman Joan Hunter of The Fort Worth Transportation Authority. All its buses except its express buses have racks. Older models have two racks while 12 new buses have three racks on each bus.
"We wanted to add three because they're so popular," said Hunter.
Dallas Area Rapid Transit said it is scheduled to put racks on buses in July.
For Mike Lutomski, president of Greater Houston Off Road Biking Association and a NASA engineer, METRO's launch today of bike racks on buses is more than a service for bicyclists.
"It's a quality of life issue," said Lutomski. "How do you bring people and jobs and companies to Houston? You got to have leadership and commitment. Someone at METRO made the decision. You have to be brave enough to make the decision. And they knew we would have never stopped bugging them."
For METRO's own Hao Le, a senior staff attorney, bike racks on buses are a wonderful amenity. Below are photos of Hao's lunchtime routine. METRO's captain of our newly formed bike team, Hao rides 18 miles during his lunch hour, four days a week, stashing his bike in an empty cubicle and sneaking out through the loading dock.
