Decomissioned NPS B-Cycle Bikes

D-cycle by Payton Chung

So remember those B-Cycle bikes that NPS was chaining up to the docking station. It looks like they've done away with the docking station altogether.

Decommissioned B-Cycle bikes at NPS National Mall HQ. The rack in the link's photo is gone and left some rust marks; the electric meter remains.

Which reminds me, what ever happened to the SmartBike bicycles?

Comments

[Will]

This is why we can't have nice things.

[Jonathan Krall]

Thanks for the photo and links to past stories! I had pretty much missed this, but it gives insight into NPS thinking--they had been considering B-Cycle for public as well as staff use before CaBi came along. With CaBi, a separate, incompatible service makes little sense.

I'd bet dollars to dimes that the NPS has a business-plan-type document somewhere that says that NPS is expected to make money by controlling and selling transportation on NPS land. Hence their resistance to CaBi and pedicabs.

[Bossi]

I spotted a SmartBike in Logan Circle about a month or two ago. So I guess at least some must've been sold off locally.

[GMB]

Wouldn't these bikes be great for teaching cycling in high schools? Could they be donated to the school system? I'm pretty sure Arlington will take them!