urbanSTL

Bike Share at SIUE Nobody mentioned this before,
the post covered and there's a website.

Oh my goodness. This isn't the type of bike share system I want to see, but it is a step sort of in that direction. It's limited to SIUE people though. That's no good. It can surely be expanded though given the will and a bit of money. I'm sure given the number of people like me out there the downtown bike station could easily have a few bikes donated for this purpose. Hopefully after that we could graduate from the 20th century person-to-person renting sytem with papers and what not and into something more Bixi-like.

^ But why would a huge bike parking garage be needed at the Delmar Station?

We should build it at Delmar because it would allow visibility and a new entrance from the street itself. If the loop is to expand past the station, people need a reason to cross the street, and the old building above the station is too nice not to be used.



It doesn't have to be primarily a bike parking garage. It could be half garage, half awesome TOD retail with the metrolink station as the courtyard. There's a very popular art space in Seoul called Ssamzie which is essentially a big spiraling square. They often hang art work in the open space. I was there on Sunday and noticed the railings had lots of trailing vines hanging off of them.





This is very compatible with the 'cycling oasis' planned for Philly. Bikes and a walkway on the outside, shops on the inside, or the reverse. More than a courtyard, there would also be the ability to look out over the city. After a few stories, the view of forest park would start to emerge.

I don't think it matters where you put it. If we had a massive bike garage with shower facilities, it would be an attraction in and of itself. You could commute by bike to any metrolink station, get off in the loop, shower and park your bike, and then ride on to work clean and refreshed. The general rule with bike facilities is that when they are there, people magically show up to use them.


Most Metrolink stations are below the street level. Maybe Forest Park station makes mroe sense. Tie it together with the St. Vincent Greenway and the massive park and the bike parking is justified. Tie it to the loop trolley and two metrolink lines, and it seems quite central. Add the TOD already planned adjacent and tie it all together in one pretty TIGER application, and we might have a winner.

http://www.bcycle.com/home.aspx

this is the program that is used here in denver. i didn't know that it was a nation wide organization. it took years to get this set up and it's city wide. there is a rack at every light rail station that is with-in the city and quite a few strategically placed else where.

there is a section for "who wants it more" where you can vote for your city for it to come to next. at the moment it looks like topeka ks wants it the most.

but i think first, there needs to be a bike policy in place. bike st louis is great, and the complete streets bill is also a great step in the right direction, but we need to make the destination bike friendly, not just the route to get there. that needs to be done before we can have a bike sharing program.

the other thing i see with this is, really, who will use it? if i need a bike, i'll use my own. that is going to be the sentiment with most local people. the tourist, maybe, but unless you know the city very well, i'd wager that a tourist will opt for a cab.

^It's central and three greenways intersect there. You're absolutely right. A pilot program just putting racks at the attractions and the edges of the park would need to be expanded to meet demand. The zoo and the art museum would probably need capacity for dozens of bikes.

Bicycling Magazine had an article a while back called Thanks for Sharing which had the following to say,

"Wouldn't it be a good idea to have a big show of bicycles at the conventions--like a thousand of them?" said consultant Leslie Bohm, brainstorming at a 2008 board meeting of Bikes Belong, the Colorado-based advocacy organization. The Democratic and Republican national conventions, to be held in Denver and St. Paul, Minnesota, were about three months away.

Two conventions were held, and now two cities have successful bike sharing programs.

It worked so well, in fact, that Bikes Belong plans on repeating the project at the 2012 conventions.

The question now is which city will step up next... The smart money may go to Phoenix and St. Louis--the leading contenders for the 2012 Democratic and Republican conventions.

Also, the latest bike sharing musings from the TransportPolitic suggest that Barcelona's beach clustering problem would be a bigger deal in most American cities where everyone rushes downtown in the mornings and back to the burbs at night. Because American jobs are less evenly distributed around our cities, we might have logistics problems with our bike sharing programs. London is used as an example.

The interesting thing in STL is that nearly all the Arch grounds designs call for bike rental stations - in the meantime, planning is very far along towards getting a bike commuter station downtown...seems as though these functions should be combined to create critical mass.

^ They could explore it, maybe - doesn't make the 3/16th sales tax a good idea in any way. GRG "could" explore this today. In fact, they "could" make the argument that they would like to do bike sharing and therefor need additional sales tax revenue...but they're not.