The South Shore in the news

Well at least now we know with record ridership, why our fares have to go up... Its morons who work for "us"...

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$150 cab ride for bicyclist booted off train

By Virginia Groark
Tribune staff reporter
Published August 29, 2006


A day trip to South Bend ended up costing a Lincoln Park man $150 in cab fare after a South Shore Line crew member told him he would have to get his bicycle off the train.

What startled Alan Forester, 34, was that he had taken the South Shore Line to South Bend earlier in the day Sunday and no one said anything to him about his bike. Even more puzzling, he said he had followed the bicycle policy that he read on the railroad's Web site.

But that argument failed to persuade a crew member aboard the 9:40 p.m. westbound train to Chicago who ordered the train, which had rolled nearly 1,000 feet away from the station, to return to the platform so Forester could get off.

"`You're going to have to take that off,'" Forester said the crew member told him. "I said, `How am I going to get back?' He said, `That's not my problem or that's not my concern. I need to protect the safety of the other people on the train.'"

On Monday, the railroad agency agreed to repay Forester, a Chicago public high school teacher, for the $9 one-way ticket to Chicago and his $150 cab fare.

"Our mistake was at the front end of his trip on permitting him to ride because it wasn't stowed in a bag specifically designed for that and part of his frame was exposed," said John Parsons, a spokesman for the rail line. "Our crew made an error when he first came out in the afternoon, so we are going to reimburse him."

"This should not have happened," he added. "This individual was in South Bend without a means of getting back."

Although Metra last year decided to allow bicycles on non-peak hour trains, the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, which runs the South Shore Line, bans them unless they are disassembled and stowed.

The agency recently reviewed its policy but decided it was too dangerous for people to try to board the steep narrow stairs carrying a bike, Parsons said. Railroad officials also feared bikes on trains could slow down boarding or disembarking.

"There's nowhere to store it in our vehicles without blocking either the aisle or the vestibules," he said.

Bikes are allowed on the line only if taken apart and carried in a container specifically designed for a bicycle. The container must be placed in the overhead luggage racks, Parsons said. The agency will review the wording on its Web site to see whether it needs clarification, he said.

Forester does not have a foldable bike. Instead, he took the wheels off his bike and put them in one green duffel bag and the frame in another before boarding a 2:03 p.m. train from the Van Buren Street station.

But on the return trip, a crew member spotted handlebars protruding from one of the bags.

"He said, `I wish I would have seen that. You're going to have to take that off,'" Forester said the crew member told him.

Forester shook the bag to show it wouldn't fall off the rack while in transit, but that didn't sway the person who ordered the train back to the station, he said.

Parsons couldn't confirm that the train pulled back into the station.

Meanwhile, Forester, who got off the train because he didn't want to get arrested, hailed a cab back to Lincoln Park.

Even after learning he would get his money back Monday, Forester remained skeptical.

"I live in Chicago so I'm a little bit of a pessimist," he said. "So I'll believe it when I see it."

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vgroark@tribune.com