SVBC News
Mountain View Council Votes for Bike Share Study
Last week’s Mountain View City Council vote on Bike Share turned out to be a mixed bag. After learning late Monday that Ford was not willing to sponsor operating costs for any cities on the Peninsula that want to join the Bay Area system expansion, Mountain View city staff was understandably uncomfortable recommending that the city commit to a full 350-bike re-launch.
Action Alert: Support a New Bike Share Model in Mountain View
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. At SVBC, we've made it clear that we supported bike sharing as a viable transportation solution, and were ready to help cities figure out solutions that worked locally. 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.
Bike Share for All
For many people, bike share offers a modern, fun, and sustainable solution to the "first and last mile" connectivity from transit that plagues our public transit systems. From Los Angeles to Minneapolis and New York, cities have been quickly adopting bike share programs, with several million riders and growing. Despite bike share's rapid rise, it hasn't done a very good job reaching low-income residents, who are more likely to bike and walk to work than those with higher incomes, and people of color.
SVBC Invites Cities to Learn About San Mateo's Bike Share
Last week, SVBC brought together various cities' staff for a learning opportunity with City of San Mateo and Social Bicycles to discuss their new bike share program, Bay Bikes. Our goal was to share this alternate model of bike share with other cities on the Peninsula, since Bay Bikes is a different system than Bay Area Bike Share, without docking stations and with all the technology online and on the bike.
Results of SVBC Survey on Caltrain Use
We recently partnered with San Francisco Bicycle Coalition to gather your thoughts on our work towards Caltrain’s bike-friendly future through on online survey. A huge thank you to everyone who took their survey and provided feedback! Following a successful campaign [link] to increase bike capacity on future electrified Caltrain trains (coming 2020) and secure $3 million in funding for bike parking at stations, we wanted to hear from you on what improvements would help make accessing Caltrain as easy and convenient as possible for you. The results of this survey will give us a data-driven approach to our future Caltrain advocacy work and help us accurately communicate the needs of our members to Caltrain.