Chicago Takes Tentative First Step Toward Bike-Sharing

A pilot station for Chicago’s proposed
bike-sharing program, on display a couple of weeks ago. Photo: vizcha via
Flickr

Public bike-sharing is coming to yet another
American city. 

The concept, first proven in Lyon, France and
made famous by Paris’s Vélib, offers
members easy access to public bikes at stations across a city. With bike
sharing, you don’t have to own a bike to be a cyclist, and parking is
taken care of. Unlike with most bike rentals, short trips are cheap,
making bike-sharing perfectly suited for cycling as transportation. 

Earlier this summer, Denver’s
B-cycle program became the largest bike-sharing program in the
country, with 500 bikes; Minneapolis
followed with a similarly sized program just weeks later. Boston is
planning its launch for
next summer, while Washington D.C. intends
to expand from its
120-bike pilot to a system with 1,100 bikes. 

So Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s recent announcement of a new
bike-sharing program for his city, reported by member blog Livin
in the Bike Lane, isn’t going to be the first in the country, nor,
with 100 bikes, will it be the largest. It’s really just a
demonstration. But it will show many Chicagoans a new way of getting
around their city. Plus, as D.C. has shown, if there’s an appetite for a
true system, the pilot could grow quickly.

Here are the details, via Livin in the Bike Lane:

Mayor Daley announced at the Bike
to Work Week Rally last week that Chicago is getting a bike share
program come July. He’s been talking about this
for many years, so we’re glad it’s finally happening. Chicago is
following Denver’s lead and using the B-cycle bike-share program,
which seems to have been quite popular there since it started in April
with 500 bikes and over 18,000 rides so far.

In Chicago, riders will
need to have a membership card to get a bike and lock (helmet not
included). Cards are $10 for one day, or $35 for 30 days, $45 for 60
days, and $55 for 90 days. The first half-hour on the bike is free, and
each additional half hour is $2.50. Bikes will be available for pickup
at McCormick Place, Museum Campus, Buckingham Fountain, the Chicago Park
District headquarters at 541 N. Fairbanks Ct., and two downtown
locations to be announced. Drop-offs are at any B-station, Navy Pier,
North Avenue beach, Millennium Park, and any Bike & Roll rental station.

If you’ve had the chance to try out bike-sharing in Denver,
Minneapolis, or D.C., tell us about your experience so far. Has it
changed the way you get around? And what do you think about a small demo
like this? Will starting with only 100 bikes help build momentum for a
real bike-sharing program in Chicago, or is it so limited that the
public won’t understand how useful bike-sharing can be?

More from around the network: BikePortland
lets us know that at Portland’s airport, they’ve installed a bike
assembly station for cyclists fresh off the plane. The
Avenue discusses the biggest trade bottleneck on the planet, a
bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. And Bike
Friendly Oak Cliff highlights a graphic showing the
not-so-surprising fact that spending on bike and pedestrian programs is
correlated with biking and walking.