The Summit Bike Share program is nearing the end of its second season. Despite some misuse of the eBikes, officials say it’s been a good season and doing exactly what it was intended for – getting people out of their cars. Melissa Allison has more:
The bike share program using eBikes has been such a hit, Summit County is going to add eight more stations in the off-season which will be funded by grants.
Summit County Regional Transportation Planning Director Caroline Rodriguez said the new stations will help them keep their ideal ratio of docks per bike.
“We added some more bikes this season, so we didn’t have that two-to-one ratio,” Rodriguez said. “It kind of went down to, I think, one-point-seven or so, which is more toward industry standard and industry standard is one-and-a-half docks per bike.”
Along with the increased use this season thought, she said there’s also been an increase in the misuse of the bikes.
The county decided to take a playful approach to discourage future negligence.
“We’re trying to be light and playful, but also address some of these concerns about kids using the bikes,” Rodriguez said. “Basically it’s a sign that says, ‘You must be 18 and human to enjoy the bikes.’ And so, it has some cute little icons of an adult appropriately riding a bike and then a picture of a bike with a dog in the basket that is crossed out and then a child riding a bike that is also crossed out. And the message is we want to keep the system safe and available to everybody and we can’t do that if you’re going to misuse the bike.”
She said parents can help by not allowing their children to use the 80-pound bikes.
As of this report, the bikes have been ridden more than 54,000 times racking up more than 115,000 miles this season.
The eBikes could remain available through December, Rodriguez said it just depends on the weather.
I’m Melissa Allison, KPCW News.