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Stowe refutes Cameron’s bicycle-on-trains assertions
NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, NEW CANAAN, CONN., MAY 1, 2008 7A
Eco Man
Now is the time for bikes on trains
By Richard M. Stowe
In his Talking Transportation column Fit people on trains before bikes, Mr. Cameron rages against the “pro-bike lobby,” which he describes as “well organized, very vocal and relentless.” “Fit people” revolves around a string of assertions and four alleged facts. Regarding fact No. 4, Mr. Cameron admits confusion; he’s not sure if its fact, or opinion.
Cameron: “What is it about “bikers” that they feel their rights trump those of other commuters?”
Stowe: Cyclists didn’t create the crowding on the New Haven Line, nor are we seeking to prevent anyone from boarding Metro-North trains, whether with a set of golf clubs, or a baby stroller at any hour, or on any day.
Cyclists aren’t out to squelch the rights of other commuters, what we’re seeking are equal rights, a very pro-American notion.
It’s the Connecticut Rail Commuter Council that Mr. Cameron leads, which took an injudicious position at its March 19th meeting by striking all, but 13 words of a resolution primarily written to encourage Metro-North Railroad “to safely and securely accommodate bicycles on New Haven Line train cars.”
Cameron: Bikers have no more “right” to bring bicycles on crowded rush-hour trains than I have to haul aboard a steamer trunk.
Stowe: This statement implies that steamer trunks, or their modern variants – suitcases with rollers, are prohibited at peak hours, but they’re not, nor should they be, but bicycles are!
Deconstructing Mr. Cameron’s facts:
Cameron: (No. 1) There’s no room for bikes at rush hours.
Stowe: Not all rush hour trains are equally crowded at all stations; the extent of crowding is time and location dependent. When a peak hour train is less crowded, the revenue of a cyclist’s fare benefits Metro-North.
Cameron: Heck, we don’t have seats for paying passengers, let alone bicycles.
Stowe: In his column Saving the Bar Cars, Mr. Cameron, a self-confessed teetotaler, sings praises about efforts spearheaded by alcoholic-drinks-on-trains advocate Terri Cronin and her commuter council posse to lobby for bar cars, which he describes as analogous to Metro-North’s holy grail. But Mr. Cameron fails to inform his readers of the trade-off: a loss of a minimum of 72 seats per M-8 bar car.
According to C-DOT officials, ten M-8 bar cars are on order; that’s a loss of 720 seats. Mr. Cameron’s thinking: a seat sacrificed for alcoholic beverage consumption is good, but a seat lost for a bicycle, a vehicle for invigorating exercise to and from train stations, is unconscionable?
With seats already removed, perhaps peak-hour bike parking can be integrated into bar cars. Drinks aren’t served in the a.m. peak.
Cameron: And the M-8 cars that are coming won’t change that crowding for many, many years given annual ridership increases averaging five percent.
Stowe: 380 M-8 cars plus 132 M-2 cars rehabbed in a “critical-systems-replacement” program, equals a forty percent increase in train cars and at least a thirty percent increase in seats.
Cameron: (No. 2) Bikes are already allowed on non-rush hour trains. And they’re carried for free. So quit your whining.
Stowe: We’re not whining. Section 66 of New York State Railroad Law, to quote the New York Times, mandates “free transportation of bicycles as baggage.” Section 66 states “no such passenger shall be required to crate, cover, or otherwise protect any such bicycle,” nor does it permit peak hour restrictions.
Cameron: (No. 3) if you’re heading for New York City, you don’t need a bike. Mass transit is plentiful, so leave your Cannondale in Cannondale.
Stowe: For intrastate travel in Connecticut, where mass transit is infrequent and doesn’t deliver the “last mile,” bicycle travel in tandem with trains is essential.
Cameron: (No. 4) I don’t think there’s any demand for bikes among city-bound commuters.
Stowe: Caltrain officials said the same thing before instituting its 24-7 bikes-on-trains program, but in the San Jose to San Francisco corridor cyclists travel to and from all stations.
In 2007 a record breaking 2300 bikes-on-trains customers boarded Caltrain daily. That accounts for 6.2 percent of Caltrain riders. What’s good for California in this case is good for Connecticut.
With price of oil cresting 120 dollars per barrel never has there been a better time for Metro-North to accommodate bicycles during peak hours.
Richard Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group, an environmental education organization, and founder and director of Rail*Trains*Ecology*Cycling, a nonprofit advocacy group promoting sustainable modes of transportation.
Editor’s Note: Mr. Cameron’s Fit people on trains before bikes ran in the New Canaan Advertiser on April 24. The same day the commentary also appeared in print in the Darien Times (The facts about bikes on trains) and Greenwich Post (Keep bikes off trains). The commentary appeared on April 21 as “Bicycle on Trains?” in Talking Transportation (http://talkingtransportation.blogspot.com) - Mr. Cameron’s blog.
bicycling, trains, renewable energy & climate change
NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, NEW CANAAN, CONN., THURSDAY, APRIL, 17, 2008 PAGE 7A
Eco Man
Spring brings green efforts
Easter Sunday, March 23, was the first holiday to fall at the outset of spring 2008. I celebrated that brisk, sunny day with a bicycle ride from New Canaan to an unnamed neighborhood south of Chinatown, south of the Williamsburg Bridge. Easter Sunday – the unofficial start of the cycling season.
My destination was Broadway East, where I would feast on what turned out to be an unquestionably un-Easter Sunday-like dinner.
After bicycling down Old Stamford Road I traversed a subdued U.S. 1 to New Rochelle. There I turned left on Echo Road and right on Pelham Road. That allowed me to ride through Pelham Bay Park and down Westchester Avenue. I entered Manhattan on the Third Avenue Bridge, which led me on a fast ride down Second Avenue.
Broadway East is a bright, new, upscale eatery (it opened April 7) with a palate that is decidedly low on the food chain. Our server, Annabelle, was 20-something who sheepishly revealed she was from Fairfield County (Greenwich, Darien and Wilton) and had boarded at Westminster School in Simsbury. Annabelle, who traveled in Africa and beyond, while pursuing pre-med at University of Edinburgh, shared with us the restaurant’s philosophy and her favorite dishes on the menu.
After dinner I bicycled back to Grand Central Terminal and with my bicycle boarded the train back to New Canaan. Fortunately, Easter Sunday isn’t one of the ten holidays each year in which Metro-North policies dictate that bicycles are prohibited on its trains.
The downside of those arbitrary restrictions (especially prohibiting boarding bicycles at peak hours) came to the attention of outgoing Metro-North President Peter Cannito on March 26 at the annual President’s Forum. That evening nearly a dozen cyclists expressed their outrage at Metro-North’s recent announcement to continue its current restrictive policies toward bicycles and not include bicycle parking on 300 new M-8 cars even though cyclists had been repeatedly assured that parking would be provided. A forty percent increase in the New Haven Line fleet (380 MNR M-8 cars plus critical systems replacement rehab of 132 M-2 cars), cyclists argue, is the perfect time to integrate bikes on to trains. Add climate change and potential future fuel shortages into the mix and agency-sanctioned bikes-on-trains-at-peak-hours certainly makes sense.
Of course, other issues arise when it comes to climate change.
New Canaan resident and longtime Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp posits solutions in “Earth: the Sequel – the Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming,” which he co-authored with Miriam Horn. Consider it to be a 21st Century update to “Energy Future: Report of the Energy Project at the Harvard Business School Project,” the 1979 energy strategy primer edited by Robert Stobaugh and Daniel Yergin (Mr. Yergin’s 1991 tome “The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power” is a great read.) “Earth: The Sequel” opens with an easy-to-bite read into the research, resource and production challenges facing Silicon Valley entrepreneurs transitioning a solar future into the solar decade.
The 2008 Conference of Governors on Climate Change (http://research.yale.edu/envirocenter/) will take place at Yale University on. On Friday April 18th, Governors M. Jodi Rell. Jon Corzine, Kathleen Sebelius (Kansas), Eduardo Bours (Sonora, Mexico), Martin Bursick (Czech Republic) and Premier Jean Charest (Quebec) will convene in a 10:30 a.m. plenary session open to the public at Woolsey Hall, 500 College Street. At 1:30 p.m. a signing will take place and at 2:00 p.m. Nobel Laureate Dr. R.K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will give a public address.
The 2008 conferences serves as a centennial anniversary of President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1908 Conference of Governors, which is credited as launching the modern conservation movement.
Theodore Roosevelt, IV will pay tribute to his great-great grandfather’s legacy in a private ceremony on Thursday evening
Gifford Pinchot, who in 1900 founded the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (the centennial event host) and later himself served as Governor of Pennsylvania, organized the 1908 conference.
Thirty years have passed since Fred Krupp founded New Haven-based Connecticut Fund for the Environment (CFE.) On Sunday April 20th one of his protégés, Don Strait, CFE’s current executive director will address a Earth Ministries gathering at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. The talk – a primer on past, present and future Connecticut Fund for the Environment initiatives – will take place in the church’s Library Room at 11:30 a.m. That will be preceded by an organic coffee, organic cookies hour in Morrill Hall at 11:00 a.m. Everyone, regardless of religious affiliation is welcome and encouraged to attend.
Keep it green.
Richard Stowe is president of the New Canaan Environmental Group, an environmental education organization, and founder and director of Rail*Trains*Ecology*Cycling, a nonprofit advocacy group promoting sustainable modes of transportation.
