CP24 is reporting that Vancouver's new fleet of buses have a serious design flaw. When a bicycle is mounted in the bike rack they cover the buses headlights. Cyclists can no longer use the bike racks at night. Have not found any photos of the offending buses but this link contains photos of every bus used in Vancouver. There seem to be a couple of possible culprits. http://trans-vancouver.fotopic.net
What is great to note here is that every bus pictured has a rack.
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I work as an integrated transport specialist, contracting to CTC - the UK National Cyclists' Organisation to deal with bikes & public transport matters. (www.ctc.org.uk)
Noted that a bike rack on new TTC vehicles had fallen foul of C&U regulations wrt headlight efficiency - not sure why this should suddenly arise, unless the new 3-bike unit has been used for the first time, or the new Sportworks racks with moulded wheel trays, rather than skeletal tubular ones have been used.
We looked at using the US systems (Sportworks, Moboilis, Doer) in the UK, but fell fould of UK and EU C&U regs, although some impact testing was done (the only buses tested to the ENCAP (new cars) standards, and this formed part of TRL report 592 (Bike racks on Buses) - see TRL website for resume. Buses incidentally run ove more pedestrians per vehicle per year than any other type of vehicle, for various statistical reasons, so pedestrian safety has been a major constraint in UK.
Meantine we take the bikes inside the bus, as low floor buses have been legally required to be the only type of new service bus since 1999, slightly ahead of US and Canadian bus operations.
Hope to hear more on how you get bikes on in and under buses & coaches, and feed in our experiences, including trailers for 50+ and semi-trailers for 75+ bikes.
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