Cyclist thrown off train/arrested

A Bay Area cyclist was removed from a Caltrain car because the train was already carrying the maximum 16 bikes. He was then arrested for resisting a police officer and trespassing. He claimed he only went back onto the train to get his laptop.

While I sympathize with his situation (late for work and there's no room for you on the train - that sucks) and if I were thrown off without my laptop I'd probably freak out too, I don't agree that he's a hero for defying the conductor's order to remove his bike. 16 bikes is a lot. If a train is full, it's full.

And it isn't like they aren't trying to accommodate more

Caltrain officials announced in early October that staff engineers are working on a plan to add space for more bicycles on the commuter trains.

I'm not sure what else Caltrain could do? Let you reserve bike spots? Tell you how many empty bike spaces there are on the next train? It's a bad situation and I'd be angry too, but this isn't Rosa Parks territory.

People here would love to be able to take 16 bikes on a VRE, MARC or Metro train.

Comments

[jeff]

Racial discrimination it is not, but to my knowledge Caltrain bike access has long been woefully inadequate. What the bike mode share would like like in the Bay Area if it was improved? Imagine how much faster CalTrain would work to accommodate them if cyclists were kicked off and subsequently arrested on a regular basis.

It could have ended worse. He could have "resisted" on a BART train.

[Contrarian]

My understanding is that it was a little more nuanced. The train had two racks, one at each end, each holding eight bikes. When he got on the train, the rack at his end had only seven bikes, but unknown to him the one at the other end had nine. When he tried to put his bike on the conductor told him the train was full but wouldn't elaborate. He pointed to the empty space and countered that there was obviously space for one more bike.

The part about the laptop is new, I didn't see anything about that in the original story.

[Frank]

One of the problems is that most Caltrain bike cars have space for 32 bikes, and it's not very predictable when a train with only 16 slots is going to show up.

Couple that with the fact that you have to buy the ticket ahead of time, and can't get a refund if you get bumped, and angers will quickly rise.