At tomorrow’s board meeting (Thursday, June 4), the Caltrain board will review staff recommendations about the amount of space for bikes, standing room, and bathrooms on the train. Â The key recommendations are: 1) zero bathrooms on the train (see blog post) 2) a ratio of 9:1 seats to bikes, which would keep the ratio the same as today.
This post looks at several different scenarios for how to support the growing number of people who want to use bikes with Caltrain, since a bike is a powerful tool to travel the first and last mile to and from the train.
There are two important factors with respect to decisions about bike space – the willingness to use offboard facilities, and riders’ tolerance for standing.
Willingness to use offboard bike facilities
To date, most people who use bikes with Caltrain bring their bikes onboard the train. Caltrain is a world leader in enabling people to bring a bike onboard the train. Today, only a small percentage of Caltrain bike users take advantage of bike lockers and bike share. However, the facilities have been inconvenient (e.g. key lockers that you need to rent for six months at a time) and relatively scarce.

Based on new analysis of data from Caltrain‘s most recent survey, a full 72% of people who use bikes with Caltrain said that at least one alternative would work for them, including shuttles. Excluding shuttles, 64% said that they could use one of the bike alternatives, e.g. better storage or bikeshare. A smaller number (56%) said they could use one of the storage alternatives in the survey (bike lockers, or a staffed facility).
Interestingly, out of the 39% of people who said that convenient bike share kiosks would be useful to them, 16% said that their last mile station was in San Francisco or San Jose, where the bike share system is scheduled for massive expansion, and 13% are in Palo Alto, Mountain View, or Redwood City, where the pilot is being allowed to continue to test the last mile “use case.”
Of course, if someone responds to a survey saying they might use something in theory, there’s no guarantee they would use it in practice, but this seems like the upper bound of people who would consider alternatives to bikes on board.
Update. The good news is that with the Caltrain board recommendation, or any of the other community group recommendations, the share of people who would need to use offboard facilities is smaller than the number of people who said they would in theory. Â However, all scenarios assume a five to tenfold increase in the share of people using offboard facilities, which is a big change and a level of risk.
Do you ever bring your bike onboard? | Use bike and at least one alternative | Use bike and at least one storage alternative | Use bike and at least one bike alternative |
1535 | 1101 | 854 | 984 |
— | 72% | 56% | 64% |
Standing room
Another important factor relating to bikes onboard is passengers willingness to stand on the train. One bicycle takes the amount of space of a seat on the train. The good news is this does not displace a passenger, since when there are fewer seats, passengers can stand, and standees take up less room than seated passengers.
Until Caltrain put some additional cars into service in recent weeks, the average share of standing passengers at peak hour was about 25%. On the most crowded trains, over 50% of passengers have been standing.

The analysis uses new information from Caltrain, published last Thursday about the expected peak hour capacity with electric train service (page 29 in this presentation)
Scenarios
With its proposal for electric service, Caltrain is proposing to keep 9:1 ratio of bikes to seats. Given the design of the electric cars and ridership growth, Caltrain expects the ratio of standees to increase to 37% on average.
The number of passengers using bikes with Caltrain has been growing even more rapidly than ridership overall. If bike use increases to 20%, the Caltrain staff recommendation would require 67% use of offboard facilities.  But according to a recent survey, 64% of passengers said that they would use an alternative, in theory.
The most assertive proponents of bikes onboard are asking to accommodate an increase to 20% bikes onboard. This scenario would assume over 70% standing passengers when Caltrain reaches full capacity with ridership growth.
More moderate assumptions of 8:1 or 6:1 ratio of bikes to seats would result in relatively fewer standees, and would include heavier use, and heavier investment in offboard facilities.
Update: the bike offboard percent has been updated, incorporating updated analysis.
Bicycle support scenarios | ||
Bike to seat ratio | Standee percent | Bikes offboard percent |
9 | 37 | 13 |
8 | 63 | 12 |
6 | 67 | 10 |
5 | 71 | 8 |
Caltrain is already assuming heavier use of standing room than previous expectations that 80% of rush hour passengers would be able to sit. Â How much standing room is acceptable on a system with an average travel time of 40 minutes? Â Â Given survey responses about willingness to use offboard facilities, how much should Caltrain bet on an increase in offboard bike use?
What do you think about the tradeoffs between bikes on board, standing room, and reasonable expectations for offboard bike use?
The model analyzing the impact of various bike on board electric car decisions on standing room and offboard bike use is in a Google Spreadsheet here.  Feel free to check the math and ask questions about the assumptions.
Another consideration is the cost of providing offboard solutions. Â Caltrain staff have talked about substantial increases in offboard bike facilities to help accommodate more bike users without bringing bikes onboard. How much would be needed to meet the demand?
More analysis and discussion to come…
Caltrain just isn’t running … and apparently isn’t planning to run … enough seat-miles up and down the Peninsula when and where needed. They are failing to respond to year-after-year of steady ridership/demand increases by running proportionately more seat-miles up and down the line.
That’s largely what’s behind piss-poor service frequencies to many station pairs, and creating these “trade-off issues” (problems) pitting seats vs. standees vs. bathrooms & bike space. Instead of setting up these fights over how to slice up the meager pie rations even thinner, why aren’t we and Caltrain working on making the damn pie much bigger!?
Until the corridor is at capacity (it’s far, far from it now) … why not just run longer trains (they’ve started doing a bit of this) and running them much more frequently!? The tracks and infrastructure are being used at far below their capacity.
Once the system is at or nearing capacity … THEN … is the time to start haggling over bikes vs. toilets vs. standees vs. seats, etc.
Even with parking prices up to $5, there’s never enough room in Mountain View to be sure of getting a space, so I have to take my bike. (There’s also not enough bike parking.)
And even without coffee for sale at the station, the non-express trains to SF take way too long not to have a bathroom on board.
In this board meeting, they also discussed about short range transit plan.
In slide 5, they plan to reduce weekend service during electrification.
In slide 6, weekend service after electrification remain the same.
http://www.caltrain.com/Assets/__Agendas+and+Minutes/JPB/Board+of+Directors/Presentations/2015/2015-06-04+JPB+BOD+SRTP.pdf
Can we accept such poor weekend service during and after electrification?
Bike capacity is improved because many bike advocate attend board meeting and making request. Do we need same thing if we want better weekend service?
Average traveling time and distance may change.
Faster (Electrification) and frequent service will increase short distance trip more than long distance.
Ridership increase of Palo Alto Station is much faster than SF terminal and half of such increase comes from Santa Clara county including Mountain View (8~12 min) and Sunnyvale (10~15min ride).
If Caltrain provide BART level of service (every 15~20 min), there will be significant increase intra-Santa Clara county trip. Commute to downtown SF will not increase as much because majority of them already use Caltrain or BART.
North of Redwood City (except Atherton), there are enough housing and office building support ridership for frequent Caltrain service.
Because of infrequency, many of them choose to drive to work.
Any schedules being talked about post-electrification are preliminary! There will be public process to get feedback on the schedule. I agree that it would be great to advocate for more frequent service on the weekend, and perhaps bart-like 20 minutes mid-day as well. Just because it’s on a slide now does not in any way mean that it’s a done deal.
Regarding schedule during construction, I think that’s more real. Caltrain staff analyzed various ways to get the project constructed while continuing to provide service – and the 90 minute schedule – as unpleasant as it will be for those of us who use Caltrain on the weekend – seems like a thought-through proposal.
There are many lines are got electrified but mostly in Europe or in Asia. There should be some shutdown or bus bridge but up to 2 or 3 weekend.
Caltrain’s proposal is kind of years long reducing frequency which is not acceptable for us.
Is there any special regulation/requirement for doing construction in active railroad in California or in USA?
Weekend service should improve to every 30 min (or run baby bullet every 60 min) as soon as possible. Current ridership levels already much enough to justify.
@Evans
See http://www.networkrail.co.uk/great-western-route-modernisation/ :
“Our pioneering high output equipment will be used which can electrify around 1.5km of railway per night, allowing us to keep the railway open during large parts of the construction work.”
Whoops! (I did not expect it to embed the video…). Clicking the YouTube icon at the bottom on the right works. Once you are there you can skip the first minute (unless you really want to see how long the train is :-).
Are the bike riders standing ?
yes, bike users are also standing.
[…] is proposing to maintain the same 9:1 ratio of seats to bikes as today (see this blog post for an analysis of the various bike options). Â Caltrain’s proposal would mean a much greater share of people using offboard facilities […]
Let’s get the facts straight. The current plan is to gut the 6th Bombardier cars and turn them into additional (third) bike cars. The middle seats will remain and will be reserved for bikers so that they can be seated comfortably while watching over their expensive bikes. The final straw is that fare-paying standees will be expected to pay for the mandatory third conductor(!)
Would it not be more equitable to gut the middle seats in the existing bike cars (keeping the number of conductors to two) and reserve seats for people who don’t bring bikes on board?