Capital Bikeshare is opening six new downtown Washington locations in the next week, and city officials expect to install 25 more new stations this year.
Mayor Vincent Gray opened the newest station outside the John A. Wilson Building, located at 14th and D streets NW, Wednesday morning, kicking off another wave of expansion for the popular bike-sharing network.
The District Department of Transportation says five more stations will open near downtown Metro stations over the next week. Those stations will be located near Farragut Square (17th and K streets NW), Metro Center (12th and G streets NW), Judiciary Square (Fourth and D streets NW), Gallery Place (Eighth and F streets NW) and the Foggy Bottom (23rd and I streets NW).
Transit officials also said Wednesday that an additional 25 stations will open in the District this year, starting in the summer, and released a map of potential locations.
Capital Bikeshare lets users pick up a bike at one station and drop it off at another. People can buy daily, monthly or yearly memberships, which cost $5 to $75.
The service was started in September and now has more than 10,700 members, according to city figures.
“Its success speaks for itself,” Gray said in a statement. He added that the city is “committed to adding more bikes and more stations to meet the increasing demand.”
The system now has 93 stations in the District and 18 in Arlington, including four that were installed over the weekend, said John Lisle, spokesman for DDOT.
Capital Bikeshare is also planning to add 250 bikes to its fleet of 1,100 this summer.
The expansion will be funded through a combination of federal grants and local funds, Lisle said. The installation is expected to cost $1.25 million.
The system has seen a high demand for the bikes downtown and in the Capitol Hill, Columbia Heights and U Street neighborhoods, Lisle said. That demand is fueling the system’s expansion plans, he said.
“In the city, you’re probably never more than a couple blocks from a bus stop, and we’d like that to be the case for Capital Bikeshare as well,” Lisle said.
DDOT is seeking public input on sites for the new locations. A map with 60 potential sites is available at ddotfiles.com/CaBi_Expansion. A public meeting will be held on May 25 at 6 p.m. The meeting will take place at 441 Fourth St. NW, room 1107.
