As you hopefully have heard there is a bike cage at Forest Hills Station in J.P. for secure bike parking.

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This is the second cage installed by the MBTA – Alewife station getting the first.  The MBTA has dedicated some resources and has plans to install a number of additional cages across it’s system and DotBike has been pushing hard to get one if not two of them installed on the Dorchester redline.

In anticipation of getting our own Dorchester line bike cage one DotBiker decided to get himself a Bike Charlie Card so he could use the Forest Hills cage.  So he rode down to the station and asked the attendant on duty for a card.  He was informed that they didn’t have any on hand and that he would need to call the MBTA’s main number and request a card and that one would be mailed to him.  So he did.

After navigating a few “press #1″ for this, “press #2″ for that, he reached the right person. She informs him that the only place to get the card is at Alewife station.  Being at the other end of the red line he expresses a disinclination to make the two hour round trip to Alewife just to get a Charlie card.  The initial response is that there is nothing else that she can do since this is the only place where it is available.  After he tells her that the station attendant had indicated that getting a card by mail was an option she remains adamant that that was not the case.  At this point he politely indicates that he finds the situation unacceptable and asks to speak to her supervisor.  After a moments wait on hold she comes back on the line and says they just found some bike-cage Charlie cards, and that she will mail one right away and takes his mailing address.

When asked if his friends could get a card the same way, she answered with a weak yes.  I for one am planning on making sure that this is true.

We heard from MassBike that they had been working with the T to make sure that Bike Charlie cards would be available at the stations with cages.  It seems obvious that this is the very least that they could do to encourage use of the cages.  Perhaps they weren’t so worried about it because it’s winter but in fact the time I would be most likely to use a cage would be during the winter (otherwise I’d just ride my bike where I was headed). In any case DotBike will work with other advocates to make sure that Bike Charlie cards are more accessible.