Example insanity:
Capitol Corridor trains have 4 cars. Two are handicap accessible on the bottom level and/or also bike cars. The Berkeley station has two platforms on one of two tracks. (The other track has four platforms).
In practice, very few handicap people use the train, since the stations are basically only accessible via bike, car or corporate shuttle. However, many people ride bikes to the train. This causes a shortage of bike slots, so people would bungee their bikes to rails, etc in the handicap area, always leaving a few seats for wheelchairs. (The conductors would make a bicyclist move their bike in the vanishingly rare scenario when the handicap spaces filled up. This wouldn't even delay the train in practice.)
The liberal politicians got wind of this, deemed it discriminatory, and forced the conductors to crack down on bike bungees, potentially stranding commuters even though the train was mostly empty.
Amtrak responded by adding bike slots and redesigned the cars. The conservatives deemed this unacceptable, since the new cars don't contain gun lockers.
You see, you're allowed to carry a gun on Amtrak, but it must be secured in a locker. So, Amtrak retrofitted the bike spaces so one closet (for three bikes) had a sliding metal door that could be locked. The door partially blocked one of the three bike slots (so road bikes fit, usually, but not mountain bikes), and if (and I don't think this ever happened, even once) someone brought a handgun on to a full train, they'd kick 2-3 cyclists off the train.
Why did I mention the Berkeley station, you ask? Well, with the lower bike storage density in the cars, sometimes (1 of ten rides), the train would have departing bikes in a car without a platform. The "platform" is a concrete pad that sits about 6 inches above the gravel. For liability reasons, allowing a bicyclist to disembark on gravel was a firable offence.
Instead, the bikes were supposed to move to the correct car one station earlier (though it was not always known which car was correct). Failing that, they could attempt to take the bike upstairs then downstairs to move cars, or be dropped one station later (downtown Richmond), then bike back to Berkeley.
It would have cost a few hundred in concrete to add two platforms, but it would have required coordination between multiple bureaucracies.
Also, they were forcing cyclists into dangerous situations to avoid liability. I'd love to be on the jury if something ever happened!
