Bay Area Bike Share is a regional public bicycle sharing system in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. The system began operations in August 2013 and has 700 bicycles available in 70 stations, half around the city of San Francisco, and the rest along the Caltrain corridor in Palo Alto, Mountain View and San Jose. By 2017, the system will be expanded to 7,000 bicycles, and will be introduced to the East Bay area.
The system is operated by Alta Bicycle Share Inc. in a partnership with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. The Bay Area Bike Share is the first large-scale bicycle sharing system deployed in California and on the West Coast of the United States.
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Description
The Bay Area Bike Share is a regional bike sharing program along the Caltrain corridor in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was launched as a pilot program in two phases. The first phase opened to the public on August 29, 2013 with 700 bicycles at 70 stations in five cities: San Francisco, Palo Alto, Mountain View and San Jose. For the second phase, it is planned to deploy in the five cities an additional 300 bikes and 30 docking stations during the first quarter 2014.
The Bay Area Bike Share is the first large-scale bicycle sharing system deployed on the West Coast of the United States, and, according to spokespersons from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, it is also the first regional system in the U.S. that services more than just a single city or adjacent cities. The performance of the system, including safety impacts and travel behavior, will be monitored by the Transportation Sustainability Research Center of the University of California, Berkeley.
The system is operated by Motivate (formerly Alta Bicycle Share Inc.) in a partnership with the San Francisco Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, and was supported with about US$11 million in initial public funding from several regional transportation, environmental and municipal agencies. Motivate also operates several other programs in the United States. Stations and bikes are provided by PBSC Urban Solutions.
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Pricing
The bicycles are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to anyone who purchases a membership, with three options, annual fee of US$88, US$22 for three days or US$9 for 24 hours. Any rider may take unlimited trips of up to 30 minutes, as measured from the time the bike is withdrawn from a dock to the time it is returned. Bikes can be picked up at any of the stations using a key fob or electronic code, and dropping them off at any station. Longer trips incur additional fees starting at US$4 for the first additional half-hour, since the idea of bike sharing is to make bicycles available for short trips. A replacement fee of $1,200 is charged if a rented bike is lost.
During the first 12 days since the system opened to the public, a total of 1,790 users signed up as annual members and 2,128 as casual members (one or three days). According with usage records, the average number of trips per bicycle per day during this period was about 0.92, slightly lower than the initial usage reported in the Capital Bikeshare and Citi Bike systems in Washington, D.C. and New York City correspondingly.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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