Today was a very exciting day for me (and several others). Minneapolis now has a majority of funding for its public bike sharing system. When completed early in 2010, it will be the largest bike sharing system in the United States, at 1,000 bicycles (Denver is implementing a 500-bike system, and DC already has 120 bikes on the ground). Soon you'll be able to "check out" a bike in Downtown, Uptown, and the University of Minnesota area from 75 kiosks. A quick summary of the program is in this news release from the City and in this Star Tribune article.
The first time I heard about a local bike sharing program was in Mayor RT Rybak's office. We were hearing a sales pitch from the Freewheelin' folks, who helped to bring a temporary bike share program to Minneapolis and St. Paul during the RNC. He enthusiastically wanted it to happen, and I remember him saying to me as we filed out of the room shaking hands, "This is going to happen here!" I thought he was crazy at the time, but now I'm eating my thoughts.
The biggest reason for my excitement is the huge change this will probably bring to our bicycling life here in Minneapolis. In cities in Europe with bicycle sharing systems, bicycling use has skyrocketed. This happened in cities like Paris and Lyon, where bicycling was about as common as is here. And even better, most of the bicyclists were new to the experience. Bicycling rates went up, driving rates went down, and bicycle-vehicle crashes went down as well (in this case, safety in numbers works on the roads). I haven't thoroughly read the bike sharing blog, but it contains a lot of details on bike sharing systems around the world.
The program is not being implemented free of risk. It's hard to be a leader - to be the first in the country at this scale. Those who made the funding decision worried about theft of the bicycles, safety of bicyclists, land use differences between our city and those in Europe, and the price tag ($1.75 million was requested). But in the end they decided that Minneapolis had to stick out its neck and feel the bike sharing air.
Getting to this point has required a lot of work with a strong partnership. Primarily the effort came from Bill Dossett. Many of his accomplishments are on the www.twincitiesbikeshare.com website. You can also hear Bill who was interviewed this morning on MPR. Bill is setting up the framework for a new non-profit called Nice Ride Minnesota. That non-profit will run the system. Secondarily the effort has come from the City of Minneapolis. Bob Lind in the Minneapolis Community Planning and Economic Development office provided the funding (with taxpayer dollars of course) to write a business plan. Jon Wertjes in Minneapolis Public Works twice went to the Minneapolis City Council to ask for permission and direction. You can view our second letter to the Council here (I helped to write and present this one). Last week Transit for Livable Communities joined the fray, with its decision to fund the project. They are the organization responsible for handing out the federal dollars for the Non-Motorized Transportation Pilot Program.
In the coming months, the partnership will grow and have much more on its plate. Time will tell the success of the project. But for now, I'm celebrating that one huge hurdle toward the bike share goal has been cleared.
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