e-lockers

This is a pretty cool program at Metro's sister system the BART

Members of the Bay Area Rapid Transit   district's board of directors voted Jan. 24 to approve the use of "e-lockers" that instead of being opened with keys by a passenger who wants to store his or her bicycle before boarding a train, are opened with a card read by a computerized reader embedded in the locker.

Officials of Oakland-based BART say the card-entry lockers can be used by up to five cyclists a week instead of a single biker renting a storage unit for a much-longer period of time, as is the current practice.

"The new e-lockers should make it easier for people to bike to BART," Gail Murray, president of the BART board of directors, said in a statement. "It's another step BART is taking to encourage commuters to kick the car habit."

Stuff like this is one reason why cycling is growing so quickly in San Francisco (or, I admit, it could be the other way around).

The number of San Francisco bike riders rose by 15 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to a report by The City’s bicycle program.

In the study, which will be presented today at the Bicycle Advisory Committee, observers from the Municipal Transportation Agency’s Bicycle Program counted 6,454 cyclists on the streets during sample days in August 2007, which is 800 more than noted in 2006, the first year of the bicycle counting program.

Comments

[Ren]

I really wish metro had an alternative to forcing cyclists onto the elevators. The last two times I took my bicycle on metro I encountered the following:

1) Waiting for a long line of veterans in wheelchairs with luggage coming in from the airport (multiple trips). Basically, they probably thought I was a total jerk for taking the elevator at all.

2) Waiting for a long line of very obese people at East Falls Church (also multiple trips). Oh, and one of them had gas.

[washcycle]

The worst are people who have no reason to ride other than that they want to. Now I know some people may have medical issues that are not apparent to the uninformed, but it can't be that many. You'll see them ride one elevator, but not the other.

I know at the Takoma metro, the elevator lets folks out much closer to the parking lot than the escalators do, and many of the people that park and ride crowd it up.