More than 5,000 people have signed up for Washington’s new bike share program after less than three months in operation, with riders taking nearly 37,000 trips in the first full month. The Capital Bikeshare program, which allows users to rent a bike from one location and drop it off at another, has 5,017 registered users, according to District Department of Transportation spokesman John Lisle. Nearly all of those have annual memberships, with 145 of them signed up for 30-day passes. Those numbers don’t include single-day passes, which hit 5,500 in October.
| Ghost of bike-sharing past |
| The precursor to Capital Bikeshare continues to exist on District streets — and even remains in use. SmartBike D.C., which started in 2008 under a deal between the city and Clear Channel Outdoor advertising company, still has functional stations, said District Department of Transportation bike guru Jim Sebastian. Four of the 10 will be swapped out with Capital Bikeshare stations, but it’s not clear when all the old stations will be removed. |
| SmartBike users got a deal to switch over to the new system, Sebastian said, but some still use the older model bikes because of their locations. |
| SmartBike had pioneered the concept of bike sharing locally but it was never a perfect fit. Clear Channel ran the system in exchange for advertising slots on bus shelters. Company officials did not return calls on what it plans to do with the 120 bikes it bought for the program. – Kytja Weir |
“We’re really ahead of what we had expected,” said Paul DeMaio, a consultant to the Arlington County portion of Capital Bikeshare.
The use already far exceeds the total under the precursor program, SmartBike D.C. The old system, based solely in the District, never garnered more than 1,700 registered users over two years, with only about 1,000 of those actively using the system, DDOT planner Jim Sebastian said.
The increase comes partly because the new system is far larger. Capital Bikeshare started with 1,100 bikes compared with SmartBike’s fleet of 120. SmartBike had 10 stations, while Capital Bikeshare has 92 stations in the District and 14 in Arlington County. Officials hope to add six more stations in D.C. by the end of the month, Sebastian said.
But even beyond sheer size, the system logged more trips per bike in October, DeMaio said, with two trips per bike per day in the District compared with one per bike per day under SmartBike.
Some bikes were vandalized at the start with tires slashed or bikes damaged as people tried to jimmy them out of the station locks. But Sebastian said such damage has trailed off, and fewer than five bikes have been lost.
The approaching winter weather will likely reduce Capital Bikeshare’s popularity. Officials have reduced the fleet to 70 percent to take into account lower traffic during the winter months, Sebastian said. The system also is working out some of the kinks in redistributing the bikes, he said.
