bicycle tech

On Wednesday, December 30, 2020 at 6:03:14 PM UTC-8, sms wrote:
On 12/30/2020 3:23 PM, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:

snip
Actually, I'm doing exactly what you initially suggested for non-racers:
I value the range of my gears, not the number of speeds. 11-28 instead
of 12-25 extends the range. It may change the number of speeds too, or
it may not. In my view, it does not, but I don't really care.
In my area folding bicycles are very common. Just in my own little
neighborhood I see bike fridays, Dahons, and Bromptons. My next door
neighbor has a higher-end Dahon, and they are not even really into
bicycling.

The big reason for folding bicycles is to not get bumped from the
Caltrain commuter train which limits the number of bicycles per train.
It used to be necessary to use a folder on BART which prohibited regular
bicycles during peak commute hours but they've since dropped that
restriction.

Even though the Caltrain bicycle capacity has gone way up over the
years, it's still not enough during normal, non-pandemic, times during
commute hours, on the express trains. Depending on the equipment, each
train can carry 72 or 80 bicycles. But because of the lack of viable
transit from train stations to housing-rich or jobs-rich areas, a LOT of
passengers want to bring their bicycles. Folding bicycles are much less
trouble because you don't constantly have to be jumping up to be moving
bicycles around so people can get their bikes off at the right station
and you don't have to worry about theft. Also, regular bicycles tend to
get banged up a lot on the train.

While the low gears on my Dahon Speed TR (SRAM Dual Drive 3x7) are
sufficient for most hills, the high gears leave something to be desired
in some cases.

On my old touring bicycle I have a 52/14 which is 97.57 gear inches and
on occasion I've wanted something higher, maybe around 105 to 110, but
back then the rear cluster on a touring bicycle was typically 14-34, and
the largest front chainring was 52.

I spent 20 years working in the Cupertino, Mt, View and Santa Clara area and being an avid cyclist was always aware of cyclists and extremely rarely saw a folding bike even on the rapid transit or trains.

On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 9:46:36 AM UTC-8, wrote:
On Wednesday, December 30, 2020 at 6:03:14 PM UTC-8, sms wrote:
On 12/30/2020 3:23 PM, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:

snip
Actually, I'm doing exactly what you initially suggested for non-racers:
I value the range of my gears, not the number of speeds. 11-28 instead
of 12-25 extends the range. It may change the number of speeds too, or
it may not. In my view, it does not, but I don't really care.
In my area folding bicycles are very common. Just in my own little
neighborhood I see bike fridays, Dahons, and Bromptons. My next door
neighbor has a higher-end Dahon, and they are not even really into
bicycling.

The big reason for folding bicycles is to not get bumped from the
Caltrain commuter train which limits the number of bicycles per train.
It used to be necessary to use a folder on BART which prohibited regular
bicycles during peak commute hours but they've since dropped that
restriction.

Even though the Caltrain bicycle capacity has gone way up over the
years, it's still not enough during normal, non-pandemic, times during
commute hours, on the express trains. Depending on the equipment, each
train can carry 72 or 80 bicycles. But because of the lack of viable
transit from train stations to housing-rich or jobs-rich areas, a LOT of
passengers want to bring their bicycles. Folding bicycles are much less
trouble because you don't constantly have to be jumping up to be moving
bicycles around so people can get their bikes off at the right station
and you don't have to worry about theft. Also, regular bicycles tend to
get banged up a lot on the train.

While the low gears on my Dahon Speed TR (SRAM Dual Drive 3x7) are
sufficient for most hills, the high gears leave something to be desired
in some cases.

On my old touring bicycle I have a 52/14 which is 97.57 gear inches and
on occasion I've wanted something higher, maybe around 105 to 110, but
back then the rear cluster on a touring bicycle was typically 14-34, and
the largest front chainring was 52.
I spent 20 years working in the Cupertino, Mt, View and Santa Clara area and being an avid cyclist was always aware of cyclists and extremely rarely saw a folding bike even on the rapid transit or trains.

Folding bikes are clearly a thing now on SF/Bay Area transit. https://www.bicycling.com/news/a2002...ke-everywhere/ http://sfappeal.com/2011/05/muni-all...-buses-trains/

Not my cup of tea, but we have a store devoted to them. https://tinyurl.com/yc4ycyhl

My commute is not multi-modal, although my commute route is multimodal -- and a rat race pre-COVID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HpC...=ki eljohnson I have a convenient rack at work, and expect to use it again when I return to my office one year. I may ride in today to pick up Christmas swag from clients. I have a swanky Specialized face mask.

-- Jay Beattie.

On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 10:22:03 AM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 9:46:36 AM UTC-8, wrote:
On Wednesday, December 30, 2020 at 6:03:14 PM UTC-8, sms wrote:
On 12/30/2020 3:23 PM, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:

snip
Actually, I'm doing exactly what you initially suggested for non-racers:
I value the range of my gears, not the number of speeds. 11-28 instead
of 12-25 extends the range. It may change the number of speeds too, or
it may not. In my view, it does not, but I don't really care.
In my area folding bicycles are very common. Just in my own little
neighborhood I see bike fridays, Dahons, and Bromptons. My next door
neighbor has a higher-end Dahon, and they are not even really into
bicycling.

The big reason for folding bicycles is to not get bumped from the
Caltrain commuter train which limits the number of bicycles per train..
It used to be necessary to use a folder on BART which prohibited regular
bicycles during peak commute hours but they've since dropped that
restriction.

Even though the Caltrain bicycle capacity has gone way up over the
years, it's still not enough during normal, non-pandemic, times during
commute hours, on the express trains. Depending on the equipment, each
train can carry 72 or 80 bicycles. But because of the lack of viable
transit from train stations to housing-rich or jobs-rich areas, a LOT of
passengers want to bring their bicycles. Folding bicycles are much less
trouble because you don't constantly have to be jumping up to be moving
bicycles around so people can get their bikes off at the right station
and you don't have to worry about theft. Also, regular bicycles tend to
get banged up a lot on the train.

While the low gears on my Dahon Speed TR (SRAM Dual Drive 3x7) are
sufficient for most hills, the high gears leave something to be desired
in some cases.

On my old touring bicycle I have a 52/14 which is 97.57 gear inches and
on occasion I've wanted something higher, maybe around 105 to 110, but
back then the rear cluster on a touring bicycle was typically 14-34, and
the largest front chainring was 52.
I spent 20 years working in the Cupertino, Mt, View and Santa Clara area and being an avid cyclist was always aware of cyclists and extremely rarely saw a folding bike even on the rapid transit or trains.
Folding bikes are clearly a thing now on SF/Bay Area transit. https://www..bicycling.com/news/a200...ke-everywhere/ http://sfappeal.com/2011/05/muni-all...-buses-trains/

Not my cup of tea, but we have a store devoted to them. https://tinyurl.com/yc4ycyhl

My commute is not multi-modal, although my commute route is multimodal -- and a rat race pre-COVID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HpC...=ki eljohnson I have a convenient rack at work, and expect to use it again when I return to my office one year. I may ride in today to pick up Christmas swag from clients. I have a swanky Specialized face mask.

Tell me Jay, how often do you travel on the bay area transit systems?

On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 12:04:51 PM UTC-8, wrote:
On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 10:22:03 AM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 9:46:36 AM UTC-8, wrote:
On Wednesday, December 30, 2020 at 6:03:14 PM UTC-8, sms wrote:
On 12/30/2020 3:23 PM, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:

snip
Actually, I'm doing exactly what you initially suggested for non-racers:
I value the range of my gears, not the number of speeds. 11-28 instead
of 12-25 extends the range. It may change the number of speeds too, or
it may not. In my view, it does not, but I don't really care.
In my area folding bicycles are very common. Just in my own little
neighborhood I see bike fridays, Dahons, and Bromptons. My next door
neighbor has a higher-end Dahon, and they are not even really into
bicycling.

The big reason for folding bicycles is to not get bumped from the
Caltrain commuter train which limits the number of bicycles per train.
It used to be necessary to use a folder on BART which prohibited regular
bicycles during peak commute hours but they've since dropped that
restriction.

Even though the Caltrain bicycle capacity has gone way up over the
years, it's still not enough during normal, non-pandemic, times during
commute hours, on the express trains. Depending on the equipment, each
train can carry 72 or 80 bicycles. But because of the lack of viable
transit from train stations to housing-rich or jobs-rich areas, a LOT of
passengers want to bring their bicycles. Folding bicycles are much less
trouble because you don't constantly have to be jumping up to be moving
bicycles around so people can get their bikes off at the right station
and you don't have to worry about theft. Also, regular bicycles tend to
get banged up a lot on the train.

While the low gears on my Dahon Speed TR (SRAM Dual Drive 3x7) are
sufficient for most hills, the high gears leave something to be desired
in some cases.

On my old touring bicycle I have a 52/14 which is 97.57 gear inches and
on occasion I've wanted something higher, maybe around 105 to 110, but
back then the rear cluster on a touring bicycle was typically 14-34, and
the largest front chainring was 52.
I spent 20 years working in the Cupertino, Mt, View and Santa Clara area and being an avid cyclist was always aware of cyclists and extremely rarely saw a folding bike even on the rapid transit or trains.
Folding bikes are clearly a thing now on SF/Bay Area transit. https://www.bicycling.com/news/a2002...ke-everywhere/ http://sfappeal.com/2011/05/muni-all...-buses-trains/

Not my cup of tea, but we have a store devoted to them. https://tinyurl..com/yc4ycyhl

My commute is not multi-modal, although my commute route is multimodal -- and a rat race pre-COVID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HpC...=ki eljohnson I have a convenient rack at work, and expect to use it again when I return to my office one year. I may ride in today to pick up Christmas swag from clients. I have a swanky Specialized face mask.
Tell me Jay, how often do you travel on the bay area transit systems?

Not often, but I can read. https://www.planetizen.com/node/35469 https://ridethisbike.com/bart-folding_bikes_policy.htm I would also defer to SMS.

-- Jay Beattie.

On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 12:48:03 PM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 12:04:51 PM UTC-8, wrote:
On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 10:22:03 AM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 9:46:36 AM UTC-8, wrote:
On Wednesday, December 30, 2020 at 6:03:14 PM UTC-8, sms wrote:
On 12/30/2020 3:23 PM, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:

snip
Actually, I'm doing exactly what you initially suggested for non-racers:
I value the range of my gears, not the number of speeds. 11-28 instead
of 12-25 extends the range. It may change the number of speeds too, or
it may not. In my view, it does not, but I don't really care.
In my area folding bicycles are very common. Just in my own little
neighborhood I see bike fridays, Dahons, and Bromptons. My next door
neighbor has a higher-end Dahon, and they are not even really into
bicycling.

The big reason for folding bicycles is to not get bumped from the
Caltrain commuter train which limits the number of bicycles per train.
It used to be necessary to use a folder on BART which prohibited regular
bicycles during peak commute hours but they've since dropped that
restriction.

Even though the Caltrain bicycle capacity has gone way up over the
years, it's still not enough during normal, non-pandemic, times during
commute hours, on the express trains. Depending on the equipment, each
train can carry 72 or 80 bicycles. But because of the lack of viable
transit from train stations to housing-rich or jobs-rich areas, a LOT of
passengers want to bring their bicycles. Folding bicycles are much less
trouble because you don't constantly have to be jumping up to be moving
bicycles around so people can get their bikes off at the right station
and you don't have to worry about theft. Also, regular bicycles tend to
get banged up a lot on the train.

While the low gears on my Dahon Speed TR (SRAM Dual Drive 3x7) are
sufficient for most hills, the high gears leave something to be desired
in some cases.

On my old touring bicycle I have a 52/14 which is 97.57 gear inches and
on occasion I've wanted something higher, maybe around 105 to 110, but
back then the rear cluster on a touring bicycle was typically 14-34, and
the largest front chainring was 52.
I spent 20 years working in the Cupertino, Mt, View and Santa Clara area and being an avid cyclist was always aware of cyclists and extremely rarely saw a folding bike even on the rapid transit or trains.
Folding bikes are clearly a thing now on SF/Bay Area transit. https://www.bicycling.com/news/a2002...ke-everywhere/ http://sfappeal.com/2011/05/muni-all...-buses-trains/

Not my cup of tea, but we have a store devoted to them. https://tinyurl.com/yc4ycyhl

My commute is not multi-modal, although my commute route is multimodal -- and a rat race pre-COVID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HpC...=ki eljohnson I have a convenient rack at work, and expect to use it again when I return to my office one year. I may ride in today to pick up Christmas swag from clients. I have a swanky Specialized face mask.
Tell me Jay, how often do you travel on the bay area transit systems?
Not often, but I can read. https://www.planetizen.com/node/35469 https://ridethisbike.com/bart-folding_bikes_policy.htm I would also defer to SMS.

I hate to point this out to a moron, but "increasingly popular" isn't "common". I take public transit a LOT and I have perhaps seen ONE folding bike.

On 12/31/2020 10:21 AM, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 9:46:36 AM UTC-8, wrote:

snip

I spent 20 years working in the Cupertino, Mt, View and Santa Clara area and being an avid cyclist was always aware of cyclists and extremely rarely saw a folding bike even on the rapid transit or trains.

Folding bikes are clearly a thing now on SF/Bay Area transit. https://www.bicycling.com/news/a2002...ke-everywhere/ http://sfappeal.com/2011/05/muni-all...-buses-trains/

snip

Tom is wrong of courseâ„¢.

Folding bicycle popularity really went up in the past ten or so years
with both the expansion of tech firms in San Francisco and with San
Francisco becoming a bedroom community for younger Silicon Valley tech
workers. Caltrain used to crowded SJ-SF in the morning and SF-SJ in the
evening, but now the reverse commute is nearly as popular.

When you get to 4th and Townsend in San Francisco you can get on a bus
or streetcar to go to the Financial District (and in a year or so the
new underground line will open and that goes to Chinatown. But it's
usually faster, and always cheaper, to bike from the station to the
jobs-rich areas. If Caltrain is ever finally extended to the Transbay
Terminal then there will be less of a need for "the last mile" transit.

Similarly, when you get to the stations down the Peninsula a bicycle is
very useful for the last mile (or two or three miles) since the public
transit options are so limited. Big firms will have shuttles from the
station, but smaller companies will not.

Personally, I found a folding bicycle to be much less trouble on
Caltrain. You never get bumped with a folder, but you often get bumped,
especially from the "Baby Bullet" with a full size bicycle. You don't
have to constantly be jumping up to rearrange bicycles when someone
needs to get their bicycle out of the stack. Your bicycle doesn't get
all scratched up. You don't need to constantly be watching it (bicycle
theft from the bicycle cars has occurred). When you arrive at the
station you get right off without waiting for the non-bicycle passengers
to exit. You aren't restricted to only the bike cars with a folder, in
fact you want to avoid the bike car and put your folder in the luggage
storage area of a non-bike car.

In San Francisco, another folder advantage is that you can almost always
take the bicycle into your building and store it. You really don't want
to lock your bicycle outside in San Francisco since part or all of it is
likely to be gone by the end of the day.

Ironically, the one place that hassled me about my folding bicycle was
at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission building. I was my city's
representative to MTC/ABAG and I always took Caltrain + bike. When I
told the agency person I was not going to attend meetings because MTC
was anti-bicycle, suddenly they took me and my bicycle, and that of
another irate attendee, to a huge back room with a large number of
dual-level bicycle storage racks, insisting that it was normally only
for employees, and that they might get in trouble for letting us store
our bicycles there.

It is true that if you're cycling from a suburb of Silicon Valley, to a
tech firm in Silicon Valley, you're not likely to need a folder. Most
companies have secure bicycle storage, and even locking a bicycle
outside is pretty safe. One day my wife locked her bicycle to standpipe
of the building behind her and when she came out at the end of the day
her bicycle was still there but the building was gone.

On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 1:58:16 PM UTC-8, wrote:
On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 12:48:03 PM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 12:04:51 PM UTC-8, wrote:
On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 10:22:03 AM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 9:46:36 AM UTC-8, wrote:
On Wednesday, December 30, 2020 at 6:03:14 PM UTC-8, sms wrote:
On 12/30/2020 3:23 PM, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:

snip
Actually, I'm doing exactly what you initially suggested for non-racers:
I value the range of my gears, not the number of speeds. 11-28 instead
of 12-25 extends the range. It may change the number of speeds too, or
it may not. In my view, it does not, but I don't really care.
In my area folding bicycles are very common. Just in my own little
neighborhood I see bike fridays, Dahons, and Bromptons. My next door
neighbor has a higher-end Dahon, and they are not even really into
bicycling.

The big reason for folding bicycles is to not get bumped from the
Caltrain commuter train which limits the number of bicycles per train.
It used to be necessary to use a folder on BART which prohibited regular
bicycles during peak commute hours but they've since dropped that
restriction.

Even though the Caltrain bicycle capacity has gone way up over the
years, it's still not enough during normal, non-pandemic, times during
commute hours, on the express trains. Depending on the equipment, each
train can carry 72 or 80 bicycles. But because of the lack of viable
transit from train stations to housing-rich or jobs-rich areas, a LOT of
passengers want to bring their bicycles. Folding bicycles are much less
trouble because you don't constantly have to be jumping up to be moving
bicycles around so people can get their bikes off at the right station
and you don't have to worry about theft. Also, regular bicycles tend to
get banged up a lot on the train.

While the low gears on my Dahon Speed TR (SRAM Dual Drive 3x7) are
sufficient for most hills, the high gears leave something to be desired
in some cases.

On my old touring bicycle I have a 52/14 which is 97.57 gear inches and
on occasion I've wanted something higher, maybe around 105 to 110, but
back then the rear cluster on a touring bicycle was typically 14-34, and
the largest front chainring was 52.
I spent 20 years working in the Cupertino, Mt, View and Santa Clara area and being an avid cyclist was always aware of cyclists and extremely rarely saw a folding bike even on the rapid transit or trains.
Folding bikes are clearly a thing now on SF/Bay Area transit. https://www.bicycling.com/news/a2002...ke-everywhere/ http://sfappeal.com/2011/05/muni-all...-buses-trains/

Not my cup of tea, but we have a store devoted to them. https://tinyurl.com/yc4ycyhl

My commute is not multi-modal, although my commute route is multimodal -- and a rat race pre-COVID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HpC...=ki eljohnson I have a convenient rack at work, and expect to use it again when I return to my office one year. I may ride in today to pick up Christmas swag from clients. I have a swanky Specialized face mask.
Tell me Jay, how often do you travel on the bay area transit systems?
Not often, but I can read. https://www.planetizen.com/node/35469 https://ridethisbike.com/bart-folding_bikes_policy.htm I would also defer to SMS.
I hate to point this out to a moron, but "increasingly popular" isn't "common". I take public transit a LOT and I have perhaps seen ONE folding bike..

Well, moron, see below. And I didn't say they were common. They are a "thing," meaning that they are becoming popular as an option -- as is obvious from the press and SMS' first-hand experience as a someone with a job and a commute.

The world is different at commute time, which you probably sleep through.

-- Jay Beattie.

On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 2:25:05 PM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 1:58:16 PM UTC-8, wrote:
On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 12:48:03 PM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 12:04:51 PM UTC-8, wrote:
On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 10:22:03 AM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 9:46:36 AM UTC-8, wrote:
On Wednesday, December 30, 2020 at 6:03:14 PM UTC-8, sms wrote:
On 12/30/2020 3:23 PM, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:

snip
Actually, I'm doing exactly what you initially suggested for non-racers:
I value the range of my gears, not the number of speeds. 11-28 instead
of 12-25 extends the range. It may change the number of speeds too, or
it may not. In my view, it does not, but I don't really care.
In my area folding bicycles are very common. Just in my own little
neighborhood I see bike fridays, Dahons, and Bromptons. My next door
neighbor has a higher-end Dahon, and they are not even really into
bicycling.

The big reason for folding bicycles is to not get bumped from the
Caltrain commuter train which limits the number of bicycles per train.
It used to be necessary to use a folder on BART which prohibited regular
bicycles during peak commute hours but they've since dropped that
restriction.

Even though the Caltrain bicycle capacity has gone way up over the
years, it's still not enough during normal, non-pandemic, times during
commute hours, on the express trains. Depending on the equipment, each
train can carry 72 or 80 bicycles. But because of the lack of viable
transit from train stations to housing-rich or jobs-rich areas, a LOT of
passengers want to bring their bicycles. Folding bicycles are much less
trouble because you don't constantly have to be jumping up to be moving
bicycles around so people can get their bikes off at the right station
and you don't have to worry about theft. Also, regular bicycles tend to
get banged up a lot on the train.

While the low gears on my Dahon Speed TR (SRAM Dual Drive 3x7) are
sufficient for most hills, the high gears leave something to be desired
in some cases.

On my old touring bicycle I have a 52/14 which is 97.57 gear inches and
on occasion I've wanted something higher, maybe around 105 to 110, but
back then the rear cluster on a touring bicycle was typically 14-34, and
the largest front chainring was 52.
I spent 20 years working in the Cupertino, Mt, View and Santa Clara area and being an avid cyclist was always aware of cyclists and extremely rarely saw a folding bike even on the rapid transit or trains.
Folding bikes are clearly a thing now on SF/Bay Area transit. https://www.bicycling.com/news/a2002...ke-everywhere/ http://sfappeal.com/2011/05/muni-all...-buses-trains/

Not my cup of tea, but we have a store devoted to them. https://tinyurl.com/yc4ycyhl

My commute is not multi-modal, although my commute route is multimodal -- and a rat race pre-COVID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HpC...=ki eljohnson I have a convenient rack at work, and expect to use it again when I return to my office one year. I may ride in today to pick up Christmas swag from clients. I have a swanky Specialized face mask.
Tell me Jay, how often do you travel on the bay area transit systems?
Not often, but I can read. https://www.planetizen.com/node/35469 https://ridethisbike.com/bart-folding_bikes_policy.htm I would also defer to SMS.
I hate to point this out to a moron, but "increasingly popular" isn't "common". I take public transit a LOT and I have perhaps seen ONE folding bike.
Well, moron, see below. And I didn't say they were common. They are a "thing," meaning that they are becoming popular as an option -- as is obvious from the press and SMS' first-hand experience as a someone with a job and a commute.

The world is different at commute time, which you probably sleep through.

Scharf doesn't use mass transit does he. He depends on that always truthful and well informed Lame Stream Media to get his case intelligence about the world about him.

On the other hand I have ridden the mass transit quite a bit and driven in the Silicon Valley area a great deal which is inaccessible to most of the mass transit so that it there WERE folding bikes in any large numbers you would see them during commute hours. And I neither see them in Silicon Valley nor have I seen them on the mass transit which I take to San Francisco during commute hours to do Marin County rides. Also the Ferry goes from the Ferry Building in San Francisco to several stops in Marin and it also goes to Oakland and Alameda - North Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda are bedroom communities for the San Francisco skyscraper crowd. If there were ever any folding bikes on those ferries they were such a small number that they never made themselves visible. And on the Ferry you have to put all of the bikes either in the central lower deck bike area of on the back deck. So I would have seen them.

The massive belief of you leftists that you are being told the truth by 18 and 19 year old "reporters" hoping to get a degree in journalism shows your utter lack of any skepticism. There no longer is any journalism. It is a dead profession populated by editorials rather than news.

On 12/31/2020 2:25 PM, jbeattie wrote:

snip

Well, moron, see below. And I didn't say they were common. They are a "thing," meaning that they are becoming popular as an option -- as is obvious from the press and SMS' first-hand experience as a someone with a job and a commute.

The world is different at commute time, which you probably sleep through.

-- Jay Beattie.


Tom's experience on public transit is obviously very limited, probably
to BART and A/C Transit.

Actually "common" is an accurate description when it comes to folding
bicycles on public transit in the Bay Area, but it varies by location
and by transit agency.

On Muni Metro in San Francisco (light rail) only folding bikes are
allowed. Muni buses can take two full size bikes on a rack, but a folder
means that you won't have to worry about snagging one of those two slots.

Folders used to be the only bicycles allowed on BART during peak commute
hours in the commute direction, but now they no longer have any
restrictions. Still, folders are less of a hassle even on BART,
especially when the trains are crowded.

Folders are still common on Caltrain even though bicycle capacity is 72
to 80 bicycles per train. Without a folder there is a good chance of
being bumped, NB if you get on north of Sunnyvale or Mountain View, and
southbound in San Francisco, especially on the express trains. On the
local trains it's unlikely that you'll be bumped, it just takes a lot
longer (the express trains are slow, but the local trains are
agonizingly slow).

Ironically, the cheapest way to cross the bay into San Francisco by
transit is only if you have a bicycle with you: $1 on the Caltrans
shuttle
https://dot.ca.gov/caltrans-near-me/district-4/d4-popular-links/crossing-thebay-by-bike.

On 12/31/2020 12:48 PM, jbeattie wrote:

snip

Not often, but I can read. https://www.planetizen.com/node/35469 https://ridethisbike.com/bart-folding_bikes_policy.htm I would also defer to SMS.

Tom is wrong of courseâ„¢, but those links that you posted are outdated.

See https://www.bart.gov/guide/bikes/bikeRules

---------------------------------------------------------------------

During non-commute hours, bikes are allowed on all trains except the
first car or any crowded car.

During commute hours (7:00 to 9:00 AM and 4:30 to 6:30 PM, weekdays),
bikes are not allowed in the first three cars of any train.

Folded bikes are allowed in all cars at all times.

Regardless of any other rule, bikes are never allowed on crowded cars.

Use your good judgment and only board cars that can comfortably
accommodate you and your bicycle.

Bicyclists must hold their bikes while on the trains.

Bicyclists must use elevators or stairs, not escalators.

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I have taken a full size bike on BART multiple times. It's fine, but
it's often not that pleasant.

If the train is crowded it's a hassle.

It's also a hassle to be holding your bicycle for the entire ride,
usually standing. Sometimes you can get a seat where there it's possible
to be holding your bicycle while seated, but often not.

Not being able to use escalators is a hassle. Often elevators are out of
order and there is some weirdness at some BART stations where the
elevator goes between the paid and unpaid areas of a station. If you
take the elevator from the street level into the station you've bypassed
the fare gates. You have to back and swipe your ticket or scan your
Clipper Card. When you leave the station you need to do the reverse.