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NJ Transit designates bike-friendly weekend trains
Raritan Vakley is CNJ, right? So no bicycle service to the Big Apple? When I saw the headline, I thought a weekend afternoon bicycling around Manhattan would be the MAIN attraction. Oh well.
“Coneheads” and Spandex wins one. Silliness.
Leonard, bikes are already allowed on non-peak NJ Transit Northeast corridor trains (those that go from Trenton-Metropark-Newark-New York) on weekdays and weekends so your afternoon in Manhattan is doable. The times bikes are allowed differ on weekdays and weekends. More info on NJ Transit’s site.
And actually, William, some people use bicycles as a form of transportation (say, to get to the train station) not just for an excuse to dress up in costumes and race around.
The only “silliness” is that it doesn’t go far enough, that NJT is bragging about a half-measure.
In Chicago, every CTA and Pace bus (city and suburban lines respectively) has a bike rack on the front. The L and Metra accept bicycles on all trains every day except during rush hours in the rush direction and on a list of festival or holiday weekends. From March into November, you see bikes on buses and trains all the time, and most of the bike owners are not hard-core spandex-wearing cyclists.
Mr Hays: Consider this as the passenger analog of intermodal freight. The trains can’t stop at every passenger’s (or shipper’s) doorstep, so if you want to maximize the number of passengers (or tons of freight) then you want to make it easy for the passengers to use cars (or the shippers to use trucks) to get to and from the places where the trains do stop. For the passenger who is willing to use a bicycle rather than an automobile to get to the station, the railroad saves the cost of providing a parking space; and for the passenger who needs to go “intermodal” at both ends of the journey, carrying the bicycle on the train solves a problem which can’t practically be solved with an automobile.