Smartbike Stimulus and Fantasy Map

Greater Greater Washington recently had two posts on Public Bicycles in DC.

First was an idea that all the local jurisdictions, or perhaps DC and several other major American cities, team up for one of the stimulus programs "discretionary grants".

The catch: projects have to cost $20-300 million. Arlington currently has a grant of about $200,000 for their planned pilot, according to an Examiner article last year, though Arlington Commuter Services head Chris Hamilton says they're hoping to find more money to start with a bigger system. A maximal system of 1,400 bikes of the fancier kind DC uses, he said, would cost at most $6 million for capital and operating costs for the first two years.

I'm surprised Arlington's maximal system is 1400 bikes, considering DC's is 1200 bikes (DC is bigger than Arlington, 30.75 sq.mi. 61.40 sq. miles versus 25.87 sq. mi.), maybe it's because so much of DC is off limits. GGW estimates it would take 5000 bikes to get to $20 million. For that we'd need to get 800 a piece from Alexandria, Montgomery County and Prince George's County. Not impossible. And for those worrid that Arlington has already decided on a non-compatible system, Chris Hamilton, Cheif of Arlington's Commuter Services, states in the comments

Arlington has an RFP out on the street now for a vendor. We do not know what system we'll eventually have. If the people that run DC's system will do Arlington's for pay instead of ads we'll consider them for sure. The bike planners from DC and Alexandria are sitting on our selection panel. At this point we're open to anything.

For fun, GGW put together a map of a "built out" public bike system. It probably needs more east of the Anacostia in both DC and PG County. I'm going to try to get a copy of the Office of Plannings map for the next expansion, 40 stations with 400 more bicycles, which should be started before the end of the year.

Photo by Devyn

Comments

[Dan]

A minor quibble, but the area of DC is about 61 sq mi of land plus about 7 sq mi of water

[Washcycle]

30.75 sq miles is the size of the retroceeded Virginia portion. Not sure how I made that mistake - blogging at 2am is my best guess.