Here’s the promised companion piece to this morning’s post about Recycles Bicycles.
Last week Mayor Hickenlooper announced plans for a citywide bike sharing program, to be called Denver B-Cycle. Beginning this summer, there will be 30 to 40 bike-sharing stations throughout the city, with as many as 500 two-wheelers in circulation. This is an outgrowth of last summer’s successful bike-sharing program during the Democratic National Convention; in fact, the initial funding for Denver B-Cycle comes from the Denver 2008 Convention Host Committee, in the form of a $1 million donation
The Downtown Denver Business Improvement District will kick in $50,000 for bicycle parking projects. This will include the installation of 75 to 100 racks, as well as matching funds for property owners who improve the bicycle parking facilities for their respective properties.
Denver will be one of the first cities nationwide to launch such a comprehensive bike-sharing program.
The initial set of B-Cycle stations will lie within a 3- to 4-mile radius of downtown Denver and will be integrated with existing transit hubs, including the 16th Street Mall, Denver ’s Union Station, RTD’s Market Street Station, and FasTracks. The program is expected to double in size to more than 1,000 bikes by Spring 2010.
As the City implements the Strategic Transportation Plan it completed last October, bike sharing will be integrated into the larger multi-modal transportation system, including buses and light rail, making Denver one of the most accessible downtown areas in the United States.
