First Bay Area Bike Share Stations Hit the Pavement in San Jose

Santa Clara Street and Almaden Boulevard in San Jose. Photo: ##http://www.flickr.com/photos/bike/9455380654/in/photostream/##Richard Masoner / Cyclelicious/Flickr##

Updated 4:56 p.m.

The first Bay Area Bike Share stations have landed in San Jose. System operator Alta Bicycle Share began the roll-out yesterday with five stations and another five today, with five more coming tomorrow, said John Brazil, San Jose’s bike and pedestrian program manager.

Update: In response to our request, Alta’s Laura Ruchinskas said “unfortunately we won’t be releasing our detailed install schedule.” However, Richard Masoner of Cyclelicious wrote in the comments section that he was told by officials that “San Francisco is close behind and should be ready for installs Real Soon Now.”


Video: John Brazil/Flickr
See more photos after the jump.

Photo: ##http://www.flickr.com/photos/99931753@N06/9453822676/in/set-72157634955120405/##John Brazil/Flickr##
Photo: ##http://www.flickr.com/photos/99931753@N06/9453821426/in/set-72157634955120405/##John Brazil/Flickr##
Diridon Caltrain Station. Photo: ##https://twitter.com/SFBayBikeShare/status/364790537934483458/photo/1##@SFBayBikeShare/Twitter##
  • John Hamilton

    What’s the size of San Jose’s program? Obviously, bike share can only work when there’s a huge volume of bikes available… Pilot programs be damned.

  • Aaron, San Jose was first because they got the necessary paperwork done the fastest, but I’m told San Francisco is close behind and should be ready for installs Real Soon Now.

    Lady Fleur and I have been doing nightly scavenger hunts of the installed stations and, so far, have photos of seven stations (out of 10 installed as of Tuesday afternoon). If you look at our Flickr streams you’ll see safety vests with the emblems of other Alta-operated bike share systems – they’ve brought in veterans of those other programs to install the stations and they’ve been knocking them into place in about an hour.

    The guy in charge is Mike Garrett. He’s a San Francisco native who’s been working for Capital Bikeshare the past three years and jumped at the opportunity to return to the Bay Area. He’s super stoked to be on board for BABS. Mike is the guy in the red helmet in this photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/bike/9455379802/in/photostream/

    My photostream here http://www.flickr.com/photos/bike/

    Lady Fleur at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jrlafleur/

  • John, 15 stations in San Jose with 10 to 20 spots per station. I don’t remember how many bikes are allocated in total for San Jose.

  • Richard Mlynarik

    Ah … the sidewalks of San José, The Capital of Silicon Valley.

    So much room for street furniture, what with the complete lack of pedestrians and all.

  • Anonymous

    allocated for San Jose? Does that mean I can’t take one from Mountain View, get on Caltrain, and drop it off in San Jose?

  • Name

    Have you been to San Jose recently?

  • robs

    You could theoretically do that, but it doesn’t make sense in the context of the system. You could just as easily drop off a bike at Mt View Caltrain and pick up another bike at Diridon and take it to your final destination in San Jose.

  • Anonymous

    I need to work on my comedy routine apparently, usually I am not taken so literally.

    My general curiousity is whether or not the bikes are supposed to be allocated to a certain city?

    One could theoretically envision checking out a bike in Palo Alto, and riding it to Redwood City, for free, rather than paying Caltrain $5 for a one way ticket.

  • Alex

    I still believe that the bikes should be a different color….

  • Anonymous

    Yes, it is possible to do this. The ability to do this for free depends on cycling speed. You can probably make the 6 mile, traffic-light-filled route in 30 minutes or less. I can’t so it would cost me $4. Also, the train ride takes 8 minutes and the bike ride would take longer, so it depends on your schedule whether this is a good idea. Also depends on time of day/frequency of train service. If it’s the middle of the day and the next train is an hour, ride 🙂

  • Joey

    There are going to be around 400 bikes

  • youmei434

    tinyurl.com/lr69xbu

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