Exciting News - Bike Share Scheme is coming to Atlanta (Chamblee: 2014, college)

[ATLondoner]

This is awesome....Now we just need more bike lanes so people feel safe whizzing around town on these!

Bike share program coming to Atlanta - Reporter Newspapers

[cqholt]

Great news.

[CCATL]

Great news! Now, I hope enough people use them to see higher densities of bikes on our streets, illustrating the need to quickly install bike lanes and other bicycle infrastructure.

[JPD]

Excellent. The more bikes on the road, the safer it will be for all cyclists.

[jsvh]

Awesome! Can't wait to hear more details and see these on the streets! I used them in Chicago last time I was up there and is was great.

[ATLondoner]

I was living in London when they launched the bike share scheme there in the summer of 2010, I remember people being excited but slightly dubious and pessimistic about how the scheme would work ("All the bikes will be stolen in the first month") and wondering would anyone actually use them once the novelty wears off.

In July last year on the 3rd anniversary of London's scheme the total amount of rides was over 22 million and there are now 8,700 bikes in operation!

A more impressive stat (and one that I hope continues with the launch here in the A) is that 49% of users said that using the bike scheme had prompted them to start cycling around the city more often.

[cqholt]

Implementing the stations in key corridors will lead to its success.
Major business districts
areas with high residential density
college campuses
transit stations
tourist attractions
BeltLine
In other words, stations need to placed where people feel safe riding bikes. Downtown, Midtown, and maybe Buckhead are key business districts, but not in Perimeter Center at first.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by cqholt

Implementing the stations in key corridors will lead to its success.
Major business districts
areas with high residential density
college campuses
transit stations
tourist attractions
BeltLine
In other words, stations need to placed where people feel safe riding bikes. Downtown, Midtown, and maybe Buckhead are key business districts, but not in Perimeter Center at first.

I agree. Start there. They need to work on bike lines connecting Midtown and Buckhead so riders feel safe going up there. The Cycle Atlanta 1.0 plan calls for bikes lanes from Peachtree just up to Brookwood. I think the should try to do a bike trail along the Peachtree corridor all the way up to Chamblee. It could make for a great ride with a lot of things to stop at along the way if they do it right.

[ATLondoner]

Originally Posted by cqholt

Implementing the stations in key corridors will lead to its success.
Major business districts
areas with high residential density
college campuses
transit stations
tourist attractions
BeltLine
In other words, stations need to placed where people feel safe riding bikes. Downtown, Midtown, and maybe Buckhead are key business districts, but not in Perimeter Center at first.

You are exactly right and the companies that run these schemes (often the same company do the roll outs across various cities) do an incredible amount of research before the scheme launches and more crucially once the scheme begins as to biking route trends.

One of the major surprises of the schemes is that they tend not to always put the bike pick-up stands in the seemingly most logical places (directly outside a train station for instance) because it is so difficult to stem the tide of all the bikes going in a similar direction. (say being picked up from Midtown station and being dropped off at Atlantic station in the morning and then the reverse in the evening commute).

You will constantly seeing the bike trucks flying around town trying to restock the bikes where they are needed the most being in mind that this changes with the time of the day and the day of the week.

[ATLondoner]

And my gut feel tells me that these schemes tend to build from the inside out so I only expect them to launch in Midtown and Downtown first and see how successful the scheme is before spreading North to Buckhead.