Bike Share Program Could Come to Upper West Side

The city is considering starting a bike-share program that would allow people to rent bikes from stations when they need them and then drop them off at their destinations in other parts of the city. The Upper West Side could be one of the first places where those bike stations are installed. Joining the bike share program could cost about $60 a year, according to one city estimate.

A bike share station in Milan

The city presented a report this year on a possible bike sharing system, and the idea has been tested by smaller organizations and in a few temporary installations this summer. The Upper West Side is part of Phase 1 of the proposed bike share program, and City Councilwoman Gale Brewer is now pushing the city to move forward with a pilot program in the neighborhood. Other cities, including Washington, DC, Montreal, and Paris, have instituted bike-sharing programs, with varying levels of success.

In a letter sent on Friday to the Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn, Brewer wrote that the city should install a pilot program on the Upper West Side as soon as possible. “I strongly support moving forward with a localized, city-sponsored bike share pilot program in the 6 council district, Manhattan,” she wrote. “The size and density of the 6 district, the diversity of our constituency, and our position between Central and Riverside Parks would generate valuable user data for future planning.”

One advocate for a more bike-friendly Upper West Side, said the bike plan should be implemented all over the city (Brewer also supports implementing the bike share citywide).

“The Upper West Side Streets Renaissance thinks that a public bike share in Manhattan would be great,” wrote Lisa Sladkus, a community organizer for the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance Campaign, in an email to the Westside Independent. ”In order for it to be successful, it would need to be all over the city.  The beauty of these programs is that you can grab a bike on the UWS and take it to midtown for a meeting and have a convenient, available docking station when you get to your destination.  If a program was limited to the UWS, it would be fun for those few who live up here, but it wouldn’t be a true public bike system that allows people to use it AS public transit.”

Bike stations would be set up close to public transportation and popular destinations to make them more accessible, according to the city.

Sladkus also emphasized that the Upper West Side needs protected bike lanes so that bicyclists have a safe place to ride. Those lanes are being studied by the DOT now.

Bike shares are not without their headaches. Vandalism and theft have plagued the Paris bike share, for instance. The Parisian bikes have gotten swiped and packed into shipping containers headed for Africa, or hung from lampposts, and the city has had to pay to get new bikes or to repair the old ones, the New York Times reported this weekend. Sladkus, however, says the problems in Paris have more to do with the social issues in that city than bike sharing in general.

The city has to determine how the program will be funded. Unlike Paris, which funds the program by allowing the bike vendor to sell ads on street billboards, New York already has an agreement to sell advertising on street furniture. The program, then, might have to be largely supported through membership fees. Under one scenario used by the city to calculate the program’s costs, a yearly pass would likely cost $60, but riders could buy one-day passes for $5 and bike for up to half an hour for free. Users would probably access the bikes by swiping their credit cards. (photo by jcrakow via flickr)