The Bay Area Air Quality Management District issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a Regional Bike-sharing Program for the California cities of:
- San Francisco with 500 bikes in 50 stations,
- Redwood City with about 100 bikes in 10 stations,
- Mountain View with about 100 bikes in 10 stations,
- Palo Alto with about 100 bikes in 10 stations, and
- San Jose with about 200 bikes in 20 Stations.
The RFP calls for this pilot program to begin operation on July 1, 2012. This will be the largest bike-sharing system on the West Coast of the United States. It will cover a larger area than the regional systems of The New Balance Hubway around Boston and Capital Bikeshare around Washington, DC with less than half the number of bikes. Each on these cities of this pilot program are along the Caltrain rail system to facilitate easy commuting.
The timetable called for in this RFP will make for a very interesting summer for bike-sharing in the USA. Within a month, Chicago, New York and now San Francisco are expecting to launch bike-share.
image: BAAQM RFP
Russell Meddin - ain't no bikesharephiladelphia(.org) for this summer! Why not Philly!
Unless they are going to offer a very, very limited amount of memberships at first, this is going to cause an amazing amount of frustration due to demand far exceeding supply, at least in San Francisco.
ReplyDeleteI think the problem is a foundational one, as the solution had to be implemented in the entire area of the organization behind it, the air management district.
And at the same time the non-profit City CarShare is going to be offering its own bikes, and they are going to be electric-assist. And electric-assist bikes are what is needed in SF. (These bikes also get govt. money, albeit from a different source).
I had thought that the various mobility players in the Bay Area were becoming better coordinated.