If you’re a bicyclist who also rides Capital Metro, you likely know the frustration of waiting for your bus to arrive, only to discover that both bike slots were full. Shucks. (Insert your own creative expletive here.)

If you’ve had that experience before, you might be interested in our plans to transition our bus fleet to accommodate three bikes per bus. Our vehicle maintenance director gave a high-level overview of our plan to do just that, today at the operations/planning subcommittee meeting.

Basically, by 2015, about half of our bus fleet will be outfitted with the three-bike rack. It is more cost-effective to buy and install the rack as part of the specs for a brand new bus; hence, as we order and replace buses in our fleet, we will order them with the new three-bus rack.

You can test the new rack for yourself, this Thursday, Jan. 20. A bus with the new rack will be parked on the north side of One Texas Center, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Bring you bike and test it out! At 6:30, Capital Metro staff will address the Bicycle Advisory Council about our plans for the three-bike racks, a Rails with Trails project update, and more.