Food & Drink
FinanceDC to Launch European-Style Bike Share Program
I would ride by bike to work every day if it were feasible. I know I’m probably making excuses here, but it would be a monumental and death-defying effort to meander and zigzag my way to work while dodging between the armadas of minivans.
My laziness notwithstanding, some residents of Washington D.C. could be pedaling their way around the Capital after the city launches the nation’s first European-style bike-sharing service next month.
The program is called Smartbike DC and is modeled after other successful sharing programs like Zipcar. A prototype of the bike is pictured. Here is how the program works:
Users must sign up for a $40 annual membership to gain access to a network of bikes stored at computerized racks around the city. To unlock the bike, users simply scan their access cards. The bikes can be used for up to three hours at a time and can be returned at any SmartBike station. In the beginning at least, there won’t be any hourly charges.
The District of Columbia program is starting small, with just 10 stations and 120 bikes. In contrast, Paris started its service last summer with more than 10,600 bikes at 750 stations. But D.C. officials are eager to expand it quickly if the response is good. Proponents say the program easily could be expanded to more than 1,000 bikes at more than 100 stations within a year.
Community bicycle programs aren’t anything new. The programs exist in different forms in cities throughout the world with a similar concept – free (or nearly free) access to bicycles for inner-city transport. The obvious goal is to reduce the use of automobiles inside the city and diminish traffic congestion, noise and air-pollution.
Another goal would be that I don’t have to worry about someone ripping off my beloved Cannondale. I think this is a great program and I hope it is a great success and spawns many other programs nationwide. Maybe it will come to my town and I won’t have any more excuses.
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