Monday, September 26, 2016

Bay Area Bike Share expansion maps reveal new service areas

Bay Area BikeShare is responsible for those light blue bikes that you see throughout Downtown San Jose and parts of San Francisco. Thanks to a new sponsor--Ford--the program is going to dramatically expand starting in Spring of 2017. Bay Area BikeShare will also be renamed "Ford GoBike."

The program will go from 700 bikes to 7,000 bikes. Oakland and a couple other East Bay cities will also be added. If you are a subscriber, you will be able to access bikes in any available location in the Bay Area.

Below is the map of the area we care most about. The existing service area for San Jose is in orange, which includes most of Downtown San Jose and one station in Japantown. Phase 1 of the expansion will bring BikeShare to The Alameda. Phase 2 will push the service out beyond Japantown to the North and beyond Highway 280 to the South. Phase 3 will extend to the Airport area, the tech campuses on North First, and Naglee/Taylor. Finally, Phase 4 will go to Midtown, East San Jose, and towards Berryessa.

All phases should be complete by the end of 2018.



Expansion will start in Spring 2017 and roll out in phases, enlarging bike share in San Francisco, San Jose - and bringing bike share to the East Bay for the first time

Program to be renamed Ford GoBike as expansion begins

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Motivate and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) released maps Thursday showing the contours of the expansion of bike share in the Bay Area. The program will grow from 700 to 7,000 bikes with the first new stations being installed in spring 2017. The expansion will take place in phases, building outward from the existing service areas in San Francisco and San Jose and outward from more dense areas of the cities in the East Bay. Motivate and the MTC also released more specific maps with the proposed station locations for Phase 2 expansion stations. (Phase 1 locations were released earlier this year.) Expansion is expected to be complete by the end of 2018.

Station locations are being selected through an extensive community engagement process. Locations for the first two phases of expansion are the product of over 120 meetings with local officials, community leaders, business owners and residents, 19 public workshops, and door-to-door outreach – with more still to come. There is also an online station-suggestion portal that has generated over 5,000 unique station location suggestions submitted by the public so far. Motivate will continue this outreach as it plans additional phases of expansion, with Phase 3 public workshops beginning next week in Oakland and Berkeley (workshop schedule).

At full build-out, the system will have stations every few blocks in San Francisco from the Bay to the Beach; it will connect Oakland, Berkeley, and Emeryville; and it will extend the San Jose service area from the downtown core. It will link people to MUNI and BART, to jobs and schools, to businesses and parks. San Francisco will have more bike share bikes per capita than any other system in North America and will have one of the highest ratios of bike share bikes per capita than anywhere else in the world.

The program’s expansion is enabled by a public-private partnership, and Motivate recently announced that Ford Motor Company has signed on as the program’s title sponsor. The program will be renamed Ford GoBike as expansion begins in the spring.

“Since the launch of Bay Area Bike Share in 2013, we’ve heard a strong desire from the community to bring bike share to the East Bay,” said Emily Stapleton, General Manager of Bay Area Bike Share. “In the first year of our expansion, we’re planning to connect the key commercial corridors in Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville to provide residents, workers and visitors in these thriving cities with a new and accessible option to travel in and between them.”

This week, Motivate and the MTC also released the proposed locations for Phase 2 stations for additional public feedback. Phase 2 will bring over 100 new stations that will expand the San Francisco service area into new neighborhoods including the Haight-Ashbury, Hayes Valley, and Dogpatch, make new connections across Berkeley, Oakland, and Emeryville, and expand service throughout downtown San Jose. Maps will be posted on the Bay Area Bike Share website, see below for details.

The best bike share station locations are highly visible, close to bicycle facilities, co-located with other transportation connections, and/or close to local destinations like parks, commercial districts, or other major destinations that attract large numbers of Bay Area residents. Bike share systems thrive when stations are placed close to one another, typically no more than a quarter mile or a five-minute walk. Specific locations are chosen through a process that couples feedback from the station suggestion portal with extensive public consultation in neighborhoods where the expansion is expected to take place, along with a technical assessment of site suitability.

See specific proposed station locations and learn more about how to get involved: bayareabikeshare.com/expansion

About Bay Area Bike Share, operated by Motivate
Bay Area Bike Share is a quick, convenient and affordable way to travel around the Bay Area. The system is growing from 700 to 7,000 bikes by the end of 2018, and expanding into the East Bay. Bay Area Bike Share is operated by Motivate, a global leader in bike share. Motivate manages all of the largest bike share systems in the United States and many of the largest systems in the world, including Citi Bike (New York and Jersey City), Divvy (Chicago), CoGo Bike Share (Columbus, OH), Capital Bike Share (Washington, D.C., Arlington and Alexandria, VA, and Montgomery County, MD) Hubway (Boston, Somerville, Cambridge and Brookline, MA), Pronto (Seattle), BIKETOWN (Portland, OR), Bike Chattanooga (TN), Bike Share Toronto, and Melbourne Bike Share in Australia. Learn more about Bay Area Bike Share at bayareabikeshare.com.

About the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC)
MTC is the transportation planning, financing and coordinating agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. For more information, go to mtc.ca.gov.

No comments:

Post a Comment