AS COMMUTERS' love affair with gasoline sours, a springtime transit tryst is blooming between bike riders and the MBTA. It's a healthy relationship. The T benefits from increased ridership, riders enjoy more cheap travel options, and the state gets greener and fitter. So the T's general manager, Daniel Grabauskas, is playing matchmaker, trying to ensure the connection is more than fleeting.
Bay State Bike Week ended yesterday, and Grabauskas spent it wooing cyclists. On Tuesday, he committed to equipping half the city's buses with bike racks by the end of the year, up from one-third now, and to retrofitting the whole fleet by 2012. He also pledged a bike cage at Alewife Station, where riders with registered Charlie Cards will be able to safely park their bikes free this summer. On Thursday he announced a new weekend commuter rail bike coach - with seats replaced by bike racks on one side - to the South Shore this summer. The North Shore bike coach taxied more than 1,500 cyclists last year.
Grabauskas is taking advantage of the 6.2 percent ridership increase so far this year. Seizing this opportunity to accommodate bikes aboard the T is a good idea to help commuters forgo their cars, but more can be done to help "multimodal" commuters.
This week's announcements are inexpensive, short-term plans for attracting and retaining biker-riders driven into the T's arms by rising gas prices, Grabauskas said in a telephone interview. He estimates the bill for the whole fleet's racks will be less than $300,000 over four years. Incremental improvements like these are necessary for the country's oldest subway system.
Still, the relationship between the T and the bike community is only in its honeymoon stage. The real sacrifices are to come.
Providing space for bikes on the next generations of commuter rail coaches (due in 2011) and Red Line and Orange Line cars (2014) is a crucial investment. But the MBTA should act in the short term by easing restrictions this summer on bringing bikes on trains.
The T has been flirting with allowing bikes on the Green Line's newer, low-floor cars during non-rush hours, which is a good idea. So is opening one inbound commuter rail trip to bikes on each line weekday mornings. Station attendants would still have the discretion to bar a biker from a packed car, and these small moves would make it easier for commuters to actually bike to work.
There's still much to do, but the budding romance between bikers and the MBTA could become a marriage of convenience - not just necessity.
