L Street Bike Lane

At 11th St NW

Bike & Bus Mount Pleasant

Reasons to Be Car Free in DC: Bicycle Sharing

Capital Bikeshare station in Columbia Heights

Last week the popular transit program Capital Bikeshare introduced a rewards program that encourages users to ride bikes from full stations to empty ones. This is a good sign. The Reverse Riders program came about because so many bike docks in residential areas are emptied each morning as users ride to work and other destinations. 

Bicycle sharing programs are rare in the United States and DC has the largest as of this writing. Capital Bikeshare has close to 14,000 annual members and grows each week. Users can purchase memberships and rent bikes from designated stations around the District of Columbia and Arlington County, Virginia. 

Members can rent bikes for up to 24 hours, but the system is designed for short trips; no more than a couple of hours at most. The first 30 minutes of a rental incur no cost. Pricing increases from $1.50 for up to an hour all the way to $70.50 for 24 hours. Obviously bikes are rented for a variety of reasons; but to me, I feel that work commuting and leisure riding are the top two reasons for rentals. 

Capital Bikeshare uses a ratio of 1.5 available docks to every 1 bike in the system. In a perfect world, this would provide bikes at each station for checkout and empty docks for bike return. It doesn't always work this way though.

Stations can have a variable number of docks and stations in work centers tend to be larger. The combination of DC topography (hilly in places, mostly flat downtown), travel patterns and popularity have resulted in sometimes lopsided station availability. That is to say, that during morning rush hour, stations in residential areas may be empty or close to empty and stations downtown tend to be full or near full. Hence the Reverse Riders program. CaBi is working to manage these usage trends. The program launched in September of 2010. Let's see where we are in September 2011. I suspect the system will be much improved.

I love Capital Bikeshare. DC has been building bike infrastructure pretty aggressively for the last 10 years. This is huge feather in that hat. It gets people who may not have ridden before onto bikes and gives residents a healthy and green alternative to the sometimes unreliable Metro. It is another Reason to Be Car Free in DC. Check out the others!

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Capital Bikeshare Now in Mount Pleasant

Shame on me!  I was super skeptical last weekend when told that Capital Bikeshare would be ready for its September 20 launch.  1,000
bikes? 100 stations? No way!

Yes way!

And it's already here in Mount Pleasant. The new Capital Bikeshare station has been installed and is in service (sans bikes) right in our very own Lamont Park. The station is solar powered, the card reader is operational, signage is up and the automated bike dispensers are in place. Just awaiting the bikes!

One question I had was answered by visiting the station. I knew that a one-day membership was $5, but I wondered what CaBi (their abbreviation!) would do to insure riders returned the bike. Well, similar to a common car rental practice, CaBi will place a $101 hold on your credit card for a 24 hour membership until the 24 hour period is over.  Of course if you register for a longer term (30 days or 1 year), that won't be the case.  Your card will already be registered.  You'll get the bike for no cost for 30 minutes, then pay more depending on how long you keep the bike before docking it back in a station. According to Capital Bikeshare, they've signed up close to 1,000 members already.  They have an introductory offer of $50 for one year, down from the regular fee of $75.  Pretty cool.  Some photos:

Mount Pleasant Part of New Bikeshare

BIXI bikestation. Photo by stevey

As expected, Mount Pleasant will receive a bike station under the District's new bike sharing system,  Capital Bikeshare. This bike share will replace the SmartBike DC system which currently houses 100 bikes at 10 stations.  The new stations will accommodate over 1,000 bikes all over the city and some in Arlington as well, via regional partnership.

Capital Bikeshare is based on the BIXI system (BIcycle + taXI = BIXI).  BIXI was first active in Montreal, then Vancouver, Boston, Minneapolis, even Europe and Australia.  Now it's on the way to DC.  The new bikes are awesome looking, although I liked the SmartBike DC bikes, too.  DDOT plans to have the bikes and stations operational by the end of fall this year.  I am highly skeptical, but hey, surprise me DDOT.  The Mount Pleasant station will be near Lamont Park or the corner of 17th and Mount Pleasant Streets NW.  Don't quite have the exact location, but perhaps in the park itself?  Or near the H8 bus shelter?  

There are three other stations within walking distance of Lamont Park; 14th and Irving, 16th and Columbia, Adams Mill and Lanier Place.  And below is the DDOT map with all of the station locations, including Arlington VA.  Exciting stuff!  For all of its troubles, DDOT is really adopting a forward thinking philosophy regarding transit by instituting these types programs (Circulator, Streetcar, Bikeshare, etc).  To that I say huzzah!

View Capital Bikeshare in a larger map