Action Alert: Support a New Bike Share Model in Mountain View
Image: Mountain View launched its current bike share program on August 29, 2013.Last week, Mountain View City Council voted against a staff recommendation to begin negotiations with Ford GoBike, the new iteration of Bay Area Bike Share that is bringing 7,000 bikes to San Jose, San Francisco, and the East Bay. The vote came as a bit of a surprise, as it followed months of study and negotiation by neighboring Palo Alto, which fought to stay included in the regional bike sharing system while embracing new “smart bike” technology.Tomorrow, Mountain View City Council will have a final vote on the future of its bike share program, and we urge you to share your voice and support Mountain View’s continued participation in regional bike share.Some history: Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Redwood City were all included along with San Jose and San Francisco in the Bay Area Bike Share pilot program, which brought 700 bikes and 70 docking stations to the five cities. The regional system was the first of its kind, and we learned a lot. San Francisco saw the most use by far, but also had the densest system map and the most bikes. The Peninsula cities, with just a handful of bikes each, saw their systems lag behind national measures of bike share success.With the pilot winding down earlier this year, and the Peninsula cities not included in the massive expansion, local policymakers were faced with a tough choice: pay some hefty fees to stay in the system, look for a new bike sharing system entirely, or give up on bike share.At SVBC, we made it clear that we supported bike sharing (PDF) as a viable transportation solution, and were ready to help cities figure out solutions that worked locally. Redwood City decided to drop participation in the system for the time being, while Palo Alto began discussions with Motivate (the Bay Area Bike Share and Ford GoBike operator) and Social Bicycles (or SoBi, a company that makes “smart bike” sharing systems and who has partnered with Motivate in Portland).Mountain View temporarily extended its Bay Area Bike Share participation while city staff explored options. That time has come, and now Mountain View has the option to stay in the regional system, using the model negotiated by Palo Alto: 350 smart bikes that will operate within the Ford GoBike program. In order to maintain a regional system, with a single membership, SVBC supports this approach.We're fully aware of the challenges that the first iteration of bike share faced in Mountain View. Despite the very low station density and less-than-ideal placement of pods during the pilot project, Mountain View still had the second highest trips per bike per day, behind San Francisco. That gives us confidence that a rollout with a sufficient number and density of bikes would work quite well, providing a necessary and very sustainable addition to transit options in Mountain View.We are also working with Motivate and SoBi to make sure this new iteration is equitable, with outreach and marketing that will reach a diverse segment of the population to support the discounted low-income memberships and broader station placement. It’s important that bike sharing, in any form, serves the population as a whole in order to function as a true transit option.If you’d like to voice your support for Mountain View’s continued participation in regional bike share, send an email today to citycouncil@mountainview.gov or join us tomorrow night at the council meeting – 6:30 pm at City Hall, 500 Castro Street. The bike share decision is item 7.1 on the agenda.
