Dave Reid
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The Bicycle Sharers

On Monday B-Cycle did a bike-sharing demo in the Third Ward. Soon, 25 bike sharing stations could be spread through Downtown.

By - Jun 6th, 2012 08:00 am
Ian Abston and Jeremey Fojut take B-Cycle for a Spin

Ian Abston and Jeremey Fojut take B-Cycle for a Spin

On Monday B-Cycle brought bike-sharing to the Historic Third Ward.  B-Cycle setup a demonstration station in Catalano Square, which allowed the public to learn about bike-sharing, and take a bike-sharing bicycle out for test ride.  In fact the ART Milwaukee / NEWaukee dynamic duo of Jeremy Fojut and Ian Abston took a couple of bikes out for what appeared to be an enjoyable ride.

Bike-sharing utilizes a system of kiosks from which individuals can rent, through a membership, bicycles for short trips.  These kiosks are generally spaced out within a downtown to allow a user to ride for 30 minutes and then drop a bike off at a kiosk.  This makes the system appealing for users needing to run an errand over lunch hour, a tourist going from the Convention Center to perhaps the Milwaukee Art Museum, or even a night owl looking to pop downtown for an evening on the town while leaving the car home.

The organization Milwaukee Business by Bike (of which I’m a board member) and the City of Milwaukee have been facilitating discussions with local Business Improvement Districts, development companies, property owners, and community organizations to line up private funding for a starter system.  The starter system would include 25 stations spread across downtown Milwaukee.  As of today 12 of the stations have partners interested in participating, and additional partnerships are continuing to be sought.

 

 

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2 thoughts on “Photo Gallery: The Bicycle Sharers”

  1. max says:
    June 6, 2012 at 1:04 pm

    I’m definitely a supporter of bike sharing in general and hope that this is wildly successful in MKE.

    I am curious though (since you are a board member of the org that is backing this) – what kind of market research was done in MKE for this? Do we have the interest, the demographics, the structure, etc to make this work?

    OR

    Since Bike Share seems to work everywhere else in urban centers, was the thought that this would be a slam dunk in MKE?

  2. Dave Reid says:
    June 6, 2012 at 1:11 pm

    @max Yeah, I should clarify. Milwaukee Business by Bike was involved in getting the idea out there and now individuals (Bruce Keyes, Barry Mainwood, and Jack Hirt) from that group are running with the concept. Also I think the Bike Fed is doing some of that research.

    So I really have only been a part of discussion on the concept, not really involved in the process much at all.

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