We're still about 8 months away from the start of Capital Bikeshare in Prince George's County, but that doesn't mean it's a quite time for bikesharing in the Maryland suburbs.
In early July, bikesharing will come to downtown Columbia, MD as was promised last year.
Connected by a three-mile loop, the BikeShare system will have 70 bikes across seven stations in Columbia, featuring standard eight-gear and electric-assist models. Stations will be located at Howard County General Hospital, Howard Community College, the Crescent development, Columbia Town Center, Lake Kittamaqundi, Oakland Mills Village Center and Blandair Park.
Chris Eatough, who was a leader in the Capital Bikeshare rollout in Arlington in 2010, is now Howard county's bicycle and pedestrian coordinator, so they have experienced leadership on this. They're "pedelec" bikes come in both electric-assist and regular. They have timers on board to tell you how long you've had the bike and they all have GPS attached.
the county partnered with Bewegen Technologies to manufacture the bicycles and stations for the BikeShare program.
"We expect biking to grow as a mode of transportation here in Howard County," Eatough said. "The BikeShare will be helpful in that, because it's a new way of using bikes."
Memberships are now available online, where riders can sign up for yearly, monthly or one-time passes at $85, $15 or $2, respectively. Each pass includes the first 45 minutes of using the bikes, after which riders will be charged $2 every 30 minutes.
Riders who sign up for yearly passes before the launch earn founding member status and receive 60-minute rides and a commemorative water bottle. Members will get occasional customer surveys to fill out, Eatough said, so the department can learn more about bike riding patterns in the area.
The program will be monitored over a six-year period, costing approximately $750,000. Eatough said community partners are providing about $700,000, including $450,000 from the Horizon Foundation over the next three years, and the remaining $50,000 is coming from the county.
Viviane Lépinay-Thomas, a Bewegen Technologies representative, said station kiosks and bicycles are designed to keep track of how many trips are taken on each bike, its total distance traveled and GPS location.
"When you unlock a bike, you'll have a timer so you know how long you've been riding," she said. "It's a pretty smooth ride. For the electric assist, when you start pedaling, the motor kicks in and gives you an extra push. If you want to go uphill, it's going to help you get there faster and without breaking a sweat."
Bewegan also built the Baltimore system that opened last October and recently expanded to 50 stations.
Meanwhile, College Park is again expanding its 17-station bike share program.
The latest expansion includes five additional stations — two in University Park and three in College Park — and 28 new bikes distributed among those stations, said Zagster spokesman Jon Terbush. Two of the stations will be added to University Park on Friday, and another will be added on Berwyn Road in Jack Perry Plaza toward the end of June, Beavers said.
The system has been a success so far.
The program crossed the 24,000 ride mark less than a year after launching. This is now the second expansion since the initial launch — and further expansion is on the horizon to broaden mBike’s scope, and to increase its positive impact for the community and its utility to riders.
Hopefully it can coexist with CaBi
“We would like to be a part of a larger system such as Capital Bikeshare if they ever come to Prince George’s County,” University Park Mayor Len Carey said. “But the time to have it was probably two years ago.”
Riverdale Park is also considering joining the bike network, a town official said.
The article about Baltimore was a projection from February...so far I think they've managed to add 2-3 of the 30 stations planned for the spring expansion. No word on the cause of the delay.
It would be interesting to know whether Columbia is planning to be interoperable with Baltimore since they're using the same vendor.
Posted by: Markt322 | May 30, 2017 at 11:04 PM