This installment of It Works There could easily be called It Works Everywhere…Except Buffalo. I’m talking about integrating bicycle travel with mass transit systems. While it’s true that cyclists can bring their bikes onto the Metro Rail trains, still fewer than 50 percent of NFTA’s 325 buses are equipped with bicycle racks. And though 157 buses with bike racks sounds like, and is, a positive step forward, in the NFTA’s case it undermines the very purpose of such integration.

The arguments supporting the integration of bicycle travel and mass transit are so well known that even the huge bureacracy that is the Federal Transit Administration managed to publish a paper on it in 1999, entitled “Bicycles & Transit: A Partnership that Works.” The benefits listed by the paper include:

For Bicyclists—Access to transit allows bicyclists the opportunity to make longer trips. Where physical conditions prevent a continuous bicycle trip, public transportation can provide a link to previously inaccessible destinations.

For Public Transit Providers—Improving bicycle access attracts new transit riders. Bicycle access expands transit’s catchment area. Distances to transit stops that may be too far to walk may be within range of a short bicycle trip. Bicyclists represent an important weekend or off-peak market, when transit ridership is typically lower and capacity is underutilized. Providing secure parking for bicycles at transit stops and stations is less expensive than providing parking for automobiles.

For Livable Communities­—Bicycles and transit provide more mobility options to everyone, particularly those who because of age, disability or income are unable to drive. Less automobile traffic through neighborhoods contributes to a safer, quieter and more pleaseant environment.

For Everyone—Safe and convenient transit service and bicycle facilities attracts more passengers and increases the viability of transit service. Fewer trips by automobile reduces polluting emissions. Increased use of transit and bicycle facilities can decrease traffic congestion.

In addition to laying out these benefits, the report goes on to list several cities that have successfully implemented a bike-transit connection, including Phoenix, Seattle and Santa Clara. But not all of the cities cited were mild-weather locales. Our nearby neighbors in Ithaca were included, for instance.

In May 2005, the Common Council passed an oft-ignored ordinance requiring bicycle parking to be provided at new buildings or building expansions that result in extra vehicular parking. At the time, developer Carl Paladino was quoted by The Buffalo News as saying, “It’s stupid. People want Buffalo to be Santa Barbara. This is Buffalo. It snows. How many months can people actually ride a bike?”

That’s the kind of backwards, wrongheaded thinking that so often defeats progressive changes in Buffalo. The folks in Duluth don’t seem to have a problem riding bikes and making their bicycle-transit connections work. Nor do ten other transit agencies in Minnesota, for that matter. Add to the list mile-high Fort Collins, freezing cold Des Moines and middle of Michigan Lansing (come on, you know it’s cold and snowy there). In fact, according to the bicycle advocacy group Pedal Power, a full one-third of all urban buses in the United States are equipped with bike racks.

The trouble in Buffalo

The trouble with the NFTA’s piecemeal bike rack program is twofold. First, there’s no consistency in the system. If the NFTA is going to persuade Buffalonians to utilize its bicycle-transit service, it needs to be consistent. Currently, according to spokesman Doug Hartmeyer, bike racks are added to the system as new buses come online. In other words, each new bus has a bike rack on it, capable of carrying two bicycles. Since 2000, 157 buses have been replaced—nearly half the system. The problem, however, is that those buses don’t follow the same routes each day. According to Hartmeyer, “They don’t go to the same place every day. The 8-Main doesn’t have the same buses each day, so those buses are just interspersed throughout the system.” The NFTA’s three-bus garages choose which buses will follow which routes each day, based on maintenance and similar factors. What Hartmeyer fails to recognize is that that very fact renders the system impotent. Who will patronize a system that is unreliable? The people who benefit from a bicycle-transit connection system are likely those who only want to ride their bike one way or part of the way to their destination (otherwise they’d simply be riding). If they can’t even be 50 percent sure that they’ll encounter a bus with a bike rack at any given time, they probably won’t plan on using it.

Justin Booth, of Buffalo Blue Bicycles, agrees with that assessment. “There’s a huge lack in connectivity of that service, and they’ve never done anything, as far as PSAs or public education, to explain to people how to use the bike racks.”

And that touches on the second problem: information. There’s no literature, no public ad campaign, no public service announcements, not even a page on the NFTA’s Web site indicating that its buses are equipped with bicycle racks (besides a 2004 news release regarding some buses that would operate exclusively within Niagara County). Likewise, there’s no information on how to properly use the bicycle racks. People don’t automatically understand these things. Other cities invested in extensive advertising and education campaigns to get their citizens to use the service, and most of them saw dramatic increases in their transit ridership.

The hard part is that the NFTA probably already knows all of this. In 1999, the NFTA had a plan in the works to overhaul all 330 buses that were in its system, adding two-bicyle racks on to the front of each. But they got hung up on a technical detail. The problem was that their bid specifications matched word-for-word the manufacturer’s documents for a bike rack model made by Washington-based Sportsworks. It didn’t seem like a problem on the surface (bid specs are frequently written by local government agencies to favor a particular contractor) until a local machine and fabricating shop, EMCOM Industries, underbid Sportsworks by $50,000. Sportsworks looked at EMCOM’s design and said that the NFTA would be risking patent infringement if they installed the racks. Sportsworks had applied for a patent on a very similar design, and if they were granted the patent after the NFTA installed EMCOM’s racks, the NFTA would be forced by patent law to remove all of the bicycle racks. That was a financial risk the NFTA was, wisely, unwilling to take. Had it not tailored the bid specifications so carefully for Sportsworks, though, there wouldn’t have been such a danger. In the end, the NFTA dropped the idea of comprehensively outfitting its bus fleet with bicycle routes.

If the NFTA wants its bike racks to serve the population in any meaningful way, it has two options. One is to coordinate routes so that riders can be assured that all the buses on a few key routes will be equipped with bicycle racks. In the city, that could be Niagara Street, South Park and Delaware Avenues, Genesee and William Streets. That would put everyone in the City of Buffalo within two miles of a bus stop with a bicycle rack and guaranteed service.

The other option is to secure funding from the FTA, which will fund a bike related transit project up to 80 percent, and outfit the other half of the buses in one comprehensive plan. It’s taken seven years for the NFTA to work 157 new buses into its system. At that rate, we won’t have comprehensive bicycle-transit interconnectivity until 2015.

In a city that is already plagued by a poor perception of its public transit and the problems of widespread obesity and poor heart health, we really can’t, and shouldn’t have to, wait that long.

And nevermind the irony of Joey Fucillo trying to sell a HUGE car from the side of every public bus (working in direct competition with the transit system’s mission). We’ll save that for another day.

—peter koch

If, in your travels, you’ve encountered other good ideas for Buffalo, we’d like to hear about ’em. Call us at 881-6604 or send email to peter@artvoice.com. We appreciate it, and we’re sure the city will someday, too.