What about the northwest buses? I have yet to aee a northwest bus equipped with a bike rack. Or do you mean there will be bike racks only on metro staffed buses on the weekends?

Northwest buses have racks ...Fallbrook buses are the last to get them.

wi11ie

Um, THIRTY hybrids?  What happened to the other ten that were supposed to arrive by early June so Metro could have started it's Signature bus service in July?

And it seems that all Ppolk buses, and at least half of West buses have bike racks.  The artics don't seem to be getting them, they just need to get rid of those anyway, they are so beat up.  It looks like Hiram Clarke will be next as I've seen one of their buses with equipment (but no rack) on it.

Mary,

I haven't used a bike rack here yet (the buses equipped with them are simply too infrequent on the routes I take), but I used a similar system in Michigan.  One of the things that was always stressed was to let the driver know you were getting your bike off the front of the bus when you disembarked.  I forgot this once, and almost got run over.  I did get a stern reprimand from the bus driver.  The drivers can't always see you in the front of the rack, especially at night.

It's working great for me on the 261 Park & Ride as I've used it about 20 times since May.  Just open the cargo bin door and place your bike in the cargo hold.  The cargo bin doors are a little tough to open as you'll sometimes need to grab the bottom left corner of the door panel in order to open the door.   I've seen a few of the bus's with a new style door handle that gives  much greater leverage allowing the door to open easily.  It takes less than 10 seconds to unload as I can unload my bike before the last person exits the bus at my stop.  Zero delay time for the driver.  Thank you METRO.

J. Liggins,

          I was told by Mary herself the the Signature Service won't start until next year so until then, you're stuck with seeing the 30 used for regular service.

The first half (I believe 3550-3569) are at Polk while 3570-3579 are at West.

It was already official that the artic buses won't be getting any bike racks and you're right that METRO needs to get rid of them.  I'd replace them with low floor HYBRID artic buses if I were to make the decision of what buses to get.

~Cedric Collins~

I congratulated Metro on implementing bike rack on bus.  I made the following observation;  on a typical route, say Route 65 (Bissonett), I'm not sure if all the buses on that route have been equipped with bike rack.  According to the implementation schedule on Metro web site, my understanding is that all bus on Route 65 should be equipped with bike rack by July 15.   I really hate to ride out to the bus station, wait for 15-20 minutes, and the first bus arrives does not have the proper equipment to accomodate my bicycle.  Not only it will ruin my day, but it will put a negative impression on Metro (once again !). I think it's best Metro should put a weekly status on the percentage of buses that have the proper equipment for taking a bike on a typical route (eg.  Route 65: 50 %; Route 46: 40%).  This will give me a rough estimation so that I can decide if I want to ride to work on a bicycle.

I put my bike on the rack of a #36 bus at about noon on a hot day. It was a wonderful experience. The bus driver thanked me for riding since this was his first experience seeing the rack in use. I avoided most of the heat and sweat this way. I intend to use the bike rack a lot more in the future.

Northwest buses have racks ...Fallbrook buses are the last to get them.

wi11ie

I ride the 40 on sundays to church and I counted 13 northwest buses that we passed(6 had racks and 7 did not) and i was on a northwest bus and it did not have a bike rack. It had the plate unto which the bike rack mounts onto but it was missing the rack. I asked the driver (northwest driver) and he stated that only some of their fleet are fitted with bike racks with the remainder to completed by the christmas holidays. The reason i asked mary if it was only metro staffed buses with bike racks was because she stated that all buses that run on the weekend have bike racks and that is not the case here.

What I'm observing about who is getting racks for their buses:  I believe Hiram Clarke will start to get them now so (I hope nobody forgot about these folks) the Kashmere Garage should be the last garage to get the racks.  Not fair but when I had looked at the listing METRO has that tells me what routes will have their buses equipped with the racks, the last group of routes are operated by Kashmere---whether or not another garage operates the same route as Kashmere.  (sticks out tongue)

~Cedric Collins~

BIKE RACK FULL on the #82 Westheimer westbound today at around 5 pm near Beltway 8. Two bikes, good thing a third bike rider did not attempt to board!

"BIKE RACK FULL on the #82 Westheimer westbound today at around 5 pm near Beltway 8. Two bikes, good thing a third bike rider did not attempt to board!"

If this works out well, METRO may want to think about getting those three-bike racks.