The idea to provide a fleet of shared bikes in downtown Portland that would be rentable like Zipcars has seens stalls and restarts over the years. While the city is currently pondering a plan to put about 660 shared bikes on our streets, other cities are starting to seriously endanger our “America’s Best Bike City” cred—Boston, a town which just got around to painting its first bike lanes last year has selected a vendor for its bike-sharing program and plans to soon launch about 1,200 shared bikes.
“Will Boston’s bike-sharing scheme catch on in car-obsessed America?” ask international news outlets. Boston is teaching America how to live car free, not Portland? The shame! The shame!
Finding a vendor and figuring out the estimated $2.6 million cost of a bike sharing system are two big hurdles for Portland’s tentative bike sharing plan. While big-name companies foot the bill for bike sharing systems in some European cities—in exchange for plastering the bike racks with ads—Boston decided to go with the company Montreal’s public transit agency developed to run its own bike sharing program. Though none of the articles about Boston’s system lay out the financing very well, memberships for the program will cost only $40 a year or $2.50 a day, says the Boston Globe.
Less than one percent of Bostonians currently commute by bike, so bike sharing will likely make the city’s streets safer for cyclists by putting more bikes on the road. “Bike share will transform Boston into a world-class biking city,’’ said Boston’s “bike czar” Nicole Freedman in the Globe.
- Shared Bixi Bike in Montreal via New York Times
Here in Portland over the weekend, hundreds of people tried out a Bixi bike-sharing demo at the Waterfront on Friday and SE Sunday Parkways. When I stopped by the bike sharing booth next to Laurelhurst Park on Sunday morning, all but one of the silver step-through bikes were being taken for a spin.
Why would we need a bikeshare program here? everybody owns a bike already!
Why are those bikes so damn ugly? Are they trying to make it so that no one steals them?
Boston’s a nightmare to ride in; I wouldn’t be all that envious.
This could be Sam’s greatest boondoggle that could send him packin
One thing PBOT talked about at the brown bag we both attended, was that bike sharing really helped bump up the numbers in cities where there’s not already a sizable chunk of the population biking (like Boston)–e.g. it sort of grabbed the low hanging fruit.
Hate to be the bubble burster – there are still cars. There will always be cars.
I think we beat them to it a few years ago, except that our program was a huge failure.
Listen, we all know these bikes will be horribly vandalized and stolen in this town.
Boston will never move ahead of Portland. One, they have a much more diverse population to please and two, it get effin cold.
Why does Portland need this [EDITED: HOMOPHOBIC LANGUAGE] idea? It’s fucken stupid and only[EDITED: HOMOPHOBIC LANGUAGE] would use it! STOP RUINING THIS CITY!!!!
Put a small battery powered (2 to 3 hp) on one, and even I might ride one. Maybe. Perhaps. Although I hardly ever go to downtown PDX unless I’m escorting a wide load. So I guess I wouldn’t be riding one.