there has got to be more to this story. the bicyclist probably smelled pooey and off.

Can't Caltrain put in some more useful bike racks on their trains? We want to be a green Bay Area, but with the lack of space on Caltrain, that kinda ruins it.

I sometimes get the feeling that cops are really intimidated/uncomfortable with situations like this, which require nuance.

It's probably a lot easier to deal with crack heads and murderers. Much more clear-cut of a scenario.

Where do I send this guy a donation?

Why arrest the prick? Just give him a ticket and let him be on his way.

Just wondering, do Caltrain conductors get a thrill out of threatening people and calling the cops more than the average Muni operator? It just seems I see this more often on Caltrain.

"Why arrest the prick?"

Uh, why not?

CrapTrain has absolute power over bicyclists, and refuses even to refund the fare when they deny service. So you buy a ticket, try to get on, and they keep your money and kick you off.

The fare collection is also a Kafkaesque nightmare, so if you try to board first, then punch your 10-ride ticket, you have to get off the train again and run all around the station because they don't put the ticket-punching machines on the trains, and you get a citation if you don't punch your ticket.

I used to do this every day. Now I don't ride Caltrain any more.

Punch your ticket? Every time I've ever been on Caltrain you just buy your ticket and hop on, and they may or may not check to see if you actually have it while you're on the way to your destination. No punching necessary... My experience with Caltrain is all from 2006 onwards though, so I guess they must have changed it.

i served on caltrain's citizen's advisory council for 3 years. caltrain could care less about you the rider.

Fuck the PO Leeees!

Seriously, this is fucked. There was definitely not anything else going on except these officers of the "peace" wanted to stick their dicks in this guy's face.

Also.. did they leave his bike on the train?!

The Caltrain driver needs to apologize to this dude for releasing the hounds on him. Thoughtful citizens should not always do what everyone tells them to do. If reason no longer plays a role in society then we live in an authoritarian state. If I were on that train I would've gotten the other bikers together to tell the cops to go fuck themselves.

waste of time and money. the train full of workers was held up, we overpaid 3 professional bullies to overly punish some guy for (justified or unjustified irrelevant) civil disobedience.

we live in a silly society

"waste of time and money. the train full of workers was held up, we overpaid 3 professional bullies to overly punish some guy for (justified or unjustified irrelevant) civil disobedience."

Sure, coz it's ALL about money and keeping the economy going... those workers not being on time will cost society the monetary equivalent of them wanking off to Perez Hilton for 15 minutes less that day.

I say bravo to the biker and the filmer. They did more to expose Caltrain's incompetence than most of the media.

I think the solution is simple--put the muni drivers, who can't be bothered with passengers or fare collection on Caltrain. and put the overly aggressive Caltrain drivers on muni to start collecting fares from all the back door boarders!

Excellent solution Ylime!
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I think the solution is simple--put the muni drivers, who can't be bothered with passengers or fare collection on Caltrain. and put the overly aggressive Caltrain drivers on muni to start collecting fares from all the back door boarders!

It's all because of the Caltrain conductor. The cops are doing what they do best - treat even the most minor of infraction like a terrorist attack to make themselves feel important. That train driver though...big, fat, lazy, with the tiniest shred of power (to match his intelligence) that he's committed to exploiting. This is probably his way of enjoying a Friday.

I love these citizen videos that always start long after whatever initiated them is done and over with. The cops show up, do their jobs, then get a load of shit for doing so. Kinda like those scenes in "Cops" where the fuzz shows up to a domestic battery call and the woman is crying and has a black eye and the guy is all calm and says "What's the problem, officer?"

Maybe this guy deserved to be arrested, maybe not. All I know is that I would pretty irritable too if some wanker with a video camera followed me around while I was trying to get my shit done.

I agree that the cops are not the problem here -- the system is. Nothing has changed in years.

Caltrain has no plans to increase bike capacity. They apparently imagine trainloads of pedestrian yuppies being met at the station by limousines to take them to their offices 2-3 miles away. What they got instead is the Google bus, which skips the Caltrain portion entirely.

Thank you, diegothechemist. From the perspective of a neutral observer, this absolutely smelled like a heinous overreach by the conductor, not by the cops, and I'm glad you confirmed that.

The cops, sluggish meatheads by their very nature and almost certainly obligated by law to follow through on a complaint from a Caltrain conductor, seemed comedically powerless to do anything but play out their script. Everyone should get that the jig is up when they arrive -- there's no use explaining ANYTHING to them; the conductor had long before made his decision to be a dick.

Can the conductor be identified by name? Does he run the 226 somewhat regularly? Which female conductor (the one whose impatient voice can be heard over the intercom) was on the train? There are a number of anti-bike female conductors, but I'd like to specifically avoid this particular crew if I can help it. Thanks for any further info.

Why didn't the cops arrest the conductor for delaying the train?

Be sure to contact CalTrain and urge them to fire the conductor. Use "http://www.caltrain.com/contact.html".

Why do cops have to behave like that? They could have handled it in an intelligent manner, explaining to the cyclist that they were required to arrest him based on what the conductor says, no matter whether it's true or false, and leave it at that.

@mmmike I can see your point about the pressures of being followed around with a camera while trying to do your job, but the police, as public servants entrusted with greater authority, need to be held to a higher standard of behavior with better documentation of their actions and a significant degree of accountability. Ideally police officers should be constantly filmed at all times while on duty. I'm certain we could outfit them with some sort of small camera. Yes, it would be expensive, but it would be very helpful in settling disputes. This is the reason why squad cars have those automatic cameras now.

As for bikes yeah, we need a consistent policy across transit here. Muni is ok on buses, but not trains, BART is ok if there's room, but not during most of the hours when you'd probably need a bike for your commute (in their crazy one-way, single-destination suburbs->financial district concept I guess it makes sense, but if you live in the city you often need to take your bike out to the East Bay with you through the city so you can ride from the station to your job, you can't just ride to your local station and park it), Caltrain tries to have bike parking, but fails in their implementation most of the time (or so I've been told, I have no personal experience with this one). This is just like our failure to have consistent ticketing methods even within a single system (Muni Metro tickets when you board, unless you have a pass in which case it's only upon inspection, unless you're going through a turnstile, unless you have a pass or something big where you can just go through the unlocked gate to the side most of the time the turnstiles themselves having no real access control purpose) aside from BART with their antiquated flimsy and incredibly easily demagnetized tickets. Translink technically is still testing even though it's been working fine for at least a year or so it seems.

We just need to fire everyone locally in charge of all forms of transit and hire new staff members from other cities to fix things and make them consistent and reasonable.