Thanks to a push from City of Portland bike planner Roger Geller and bike staff at TriMet, an early design for the Portland-to-Clackamas Green Line MAX trains that 
would have reduced on-board capacity for bikes has been fixed.
The trains will have four bike hooks per car, just as current MAX trains do. Early designs incorporated only two bike hooks, with two more “flex” seats that could have been flipped up to accommodate a bicycle, but would probably have been occupied most of the time and therefore not useful as a bike spot.
Very early on in the train engineering process, TriMet thought they might be able to get even more bikes on the train, but they hit constraints. Reducing the number of bike spots would have been a real step backward, and a challenge for all the people who will use the Green Line to make a reverse-commute to a workplace that isn’t transit accessible. (The new Westside Express Service line from Beaverton to Wilsonville will have only two hooks per car, though TriMet may allow bicyclists to stand with their bikes elsewhere.)
Check out the new Green Line MAX specs here.
This is a tough one…I have seen how well the flip up seats work for bikes, strollers and wheel chairs in non peak times and standees in peak periods. I remember Kiran discussing these design issues before he left Trimet for Horizon.
With the way Trimet is going on peak hour bike access (less is more passenger space) – I would be willing to support more flip up seats if the car layout was less restrictive than the older layout of maximum seats of the current train car layout – and allowed more non peak hour bike access when it is more important (traveling with larger groups of bikes further).
I use the hooks a lot now…on the Yellow line there is usually a hook though when i do not use a hook it is usually due to the hook being too low (installation error) or due my longer wheel base bike (Dutch) not fitting the space (even hung backwards).
How about experimenting with some of the older low floor cars…remove half the seats in a train and see how folks use it. (Perhaps the red line? It would make for more luggage space.)
I do understand the desire to not loose bike capacity…given that there is more demand each year.
It is a tough call.
And to Trimet … less hooks and more bike demand requires better station area bike parking – for long term parkees and the adoption of having a bike at each end of a transit trip (Dutch, Japanese, German transit rider model).
Bikestation.org ,etc.
It could work (bike at each end model), but there are numerous challenges to overcome.
For one thing, daily. long-term bike commuters like myself need to take highly extensive defensive measures for safety reasons. For example, I’ve had to invest in the better part of a thousand dollars worth of lighting and related safety gear. (I often have to ride at night.) It becomes impractical when I’m forced to outfit multiple bikes in this way.
On the other hand, this problem could be reduced somewhat if extremely strict enforcement were implemented against dangerous motorists. As it is, I do not feel I can safely use the roads with the high degree of regularity and over the long distances, and at all hours, that I’m wont to do now, without such extensive and very expensive defensive measures.