Eyes on Milwaukee
Bike-Sharing Comes To The Burbs
Shorewood, Tosa and West Allis would each have 10-15 stations and would be part of a regional system.
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Shorewood, Tosa and West Allis would each have 10-15 stations and would be part of a regional system. Back to the full article.
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Categories: Eyes on Milwaukee
Great news! This is a wonderful demonstration of the concept of integrating into the system and serving people in a seamless way. Imagine riding downtown to work from Shorewood, dropping off the shared bike. After work, you pick up another bike and you’re pedaling home. On the day that it happens to threaten to rain, you pop out your new MCTS M-Card and take the bus either one way or both. Park that car Milwaukee, a New day is coming.
Jeff, yes the concept of commuting from Shorewood to downtown on a shared bike sounds great, but it probably won’t work out because there probably won’t be enough bikes in the right places.
If a Shorewood bike station holds 12 bikes, and 13 people decide to commute by bike, somebody is going to be disappointed. Even worse, what happens if you get back to Shorewood at night and find every station full?
The NYC and Washington DC bike share systems have been fighting (and losing) this battle for a while now. Both have purchased trucks and hired staff to “rebalance” bikes (drive them from full stations to empty ones). I live part-time in Manhattan and am amazed at how often I see totally empty bike stations (stations that had 50 available bikes the day before).
Within downtown, bike sharing should work well, because there is a mix of people going back and forth throughout the day, but when people start using them to commute (especially when there are very few reverse commuters), it doesn’t work as well.