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A Change Of Heart On Capital Bikeshare
By spokesman | August 4, 2011
When Capital Bikeshare was initially announced, I was against it. The program is partially funded with transportation funds from the government. At the time, I thought that the money could be better spent on other bike related projects such as dedicated bike lanes and paths. I believed that if more lanes/paths were available, people would be more encouraged to ride. I thought that it was access to safe routes and not access to bicycles that was limiting the use of bicycles. As an example, the Capital Crescent Trail has enabled many people to commute by bicycle. Without that path, many of those daily bike commuters would never ride bikes to work.
While bike paths/lanes would encourage more commuters, I can’t argue with the success of the Capital Bikeshare program. The 114 stations and 1100 bikes have become very popular. There are more than 14,000 annual members and have been 40,000 daily members. The system passed the milestone of 500,000 rides and will surpass 1,000,000 in a few months. Many non-bikers have given it a try and have become regular users. It has provided a new segment of the public transportation system to augment Metro trains and buses. The increased number of bicyclists make bicycling safer for all bicyclists as drivers become used to seeing more bikes on the road. Many of the users of the system will also become advocates for other biking infrastructure such as the dedicate bike lanes and paths that I would like to see.
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Topics: Washington DC |
August 4th, 2011 at 8:16 am
According to Wikipedia, the current setup required only $7.3M to build and operate for the first year. That’s amazing - an average cost of $7.30 per trip, including startup costs!