To be fair, “everyone else” isn’t travelling to Downtown Toronto to deliver food via bicycle as means of survival.
Clearly local transit agencies at Malton, Bramalea, Brampton, and Mount Pleasant do not have the capacity to accommodate the multitude of bikes dumped on those platforms, leaving many to cycle the last mile home.
All six bike coaches are currently in use on the Kitchener Line with Metrolinx adding upwards of two bike coaches on several trips in response to overcrowding. This is in addition to the pre-existing capacity of 2-4 bikes per coach elsewhere on any given consist. At some point discussion needs to be had as to how much space we are willing to reallocate from regular customers towards bicycles on board trains. The line has to be drawn somewhere.
Aside from capacity, there are several legitimate concerns beyond the racist undertones online that need to be addressed relating to poor customer etiquette from this particular group of customers. These include, but are not limited to a) the unsafe operation of bikes on station platforms, b) the increased aggression towards regular customers expressing their frustration in their inability to safely board or exit affected trains, c) increased aggression towards Metrolinx and Alstom employees simply performing the jobs they are paid to do, and d) significant delays attributed to poor customer etiquette including the abuse of the yellow emergency strip to allow themselves more time to exit OR the people holding doors for their friends with bikes then wasting further time trying to cram said bikes onto coaches already beyond capacity.
CN charges Metrolinx per axle for operation on the Halton Subdivision. There is also a significant increase in fuel costs associated with operating longer trains. There most certainly isn’t enough demand from regular passengers to warrant the use of twelve coach trains, particularly on the most affected trains in the evenings or on weekends. I don’t exactly fault Metrolinx for analyzing the data and determining that operating longer trains for the sole purpose of increasing bike capacity may not be a wise use of resources, especially when you consider that adding an additional six coaches would at best allow for the safe transport of an additional 24 bikes.
It may be worth highlighting that Metrolinx has already experimented with operating longer trains for the sole purpose of accommodating bikes. Throughout September 2023, the most affected trips departing Union at 21:34 and 22:34 were both twelve coach trains comprised primarily of the older style coaches without the washroom on the lower level. This freed up a second vestibule for bikes on each coach. Bike coaches were introduced the following month and those departures were reduced to six coach trains due to storage capacity constraints in Kitchener following the cancellation of the London service.
