e-mail to city official

Jed Howbert
Senior Policy Advisor
Office of the Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding
City Hall
New York, NY 10007

Hi Jed,

I enjoyed the discussion on the phone I had with you this afternoon.

That would be great to have a city official to sit in on the meeting that we are in the process of setting up with Bob MacLagger, Senior Director Operations Planning & Analysis, Planning, Procurement & Business Development at Metro-North Railroad. Please direct that invitation to appropriate persons.

You may forward this e-mail (or forward me contact info) to key state officials, who may be sympathetic to and may aid us in our effort to secure bicycle parking areas on commuter trains at peak hours.

Here are some of our talking points:
1) Metro-North Railroad policies should not arbitrarily and capriciously deny bicyclists the right to board bicycles on trains at peak hours and on ten holidays. That policy needs to be changed.

2) Metro-North Railroad should set aside space for safe, secure bicycle parking on the new 300 M-8 trains, the yet-to-be ordered 80 M-8 train cars and the 132 M-2 cars going through critical systems replacement.

Tie-downs that provide only for off-peak hour bicycle parking are insufficient.

a) To put this request into perspective, the planned bar cars for the M-8's are taking the seat-equivalent of a minimum of 720 spaces (10 bar cars x 72 seats per car) versus our request for 300 to 600 seat-equivalent on the M-8's.
b) On the M-8 trains the seat-equivalent area we are seeking would be a 4-seat section (2x2) adjacent to the vestibule. There we would park up to 4 bikes vertically.
c) We are seeking this space on every other cars for an aggregate seat-equivalent space of 600 seats (out of an aggregate seat total of 30,000 seats). We are willing to compromise on this with a seat equivalent space of 300 seats - bicycle parking on one out of every four cars.
d) A section of the bar car could be set aside for bicycle parking. Bicyclists drink beer, too! In fact, at the recent MNR President's Forum, one cyclist stated he would like to see higher quality micro-brew beers served.
e) To offset seat-equivalent space loss, consider flip down seats in the inner track section of the vestibules, or perpendicular to the bicycle parking.
f) On M-2 CSR cars we are seeking a bike car design similar to the Caltrain bike car configuration. Think bar car for bicycles (except that the bike cars would use a seat-equivalent space of only 40 seats per bike car as opposed to the seat-equivalent space of 92 seats that the current bar cars swallow.)

3) Metro-North policies should disband bicycle permit process. Like peak-hour and holiday restrictions, that acts as an arbitrary and capricious barrier to entry. New Jersey Transit, SEPTA, Metrolink, Tri-Rail, PATH are all agencies that discarded bicycle permits.

Thank you for your interest and support.

Richard Stowe
Rail*Trains*Ecology*Cycling
(203) 594-9097