Boston bike share on track to debut spring 2010

The Boston Globe reported last Wednesday that the city’s bike share program is on track to debut next spring, calling it “the nation’s first citywide bike-sharing system.”  Indeed, if all goes as planned, Boston will see the largest deployment in the States, aiming for 1,000 to 3,000 bicycles at stations 300 to 400 yards apart.  Nicole Freeman, a former Olympic cyclist and now director of Boston Bikes, the city’s bicycle program, is confident that Boston’s bike share scheme can be just as successful as Paris’s Velib, enthusing “bike share will transform Boston into a world class bicycling city.”

Such optimism is, however, mixed with tones of frustration by some lamenting that Boston’s roads are far from bike friendly.  City mayor Thomas Menino describes them as “old cow paths turned into roads” but, upon hiring Freedman in 2007, has taken steps to improve upon what Bicycling magazine has thrice called one of the worst cycling cities, including the installation of five-foot-wide bike paths.  Furthermore, bikers and drivers alike express worry over the compatibility between congested, trafficky roads made even more difficult to navigate by the addition of bicycles.  Freedman recognizes the need for education to ensure that cyclists and drivers understand the rules of the road so that each can commute safely.

Boston has yet to decide on a vendor for its program but intends to do so within the coming weeks, at which time it will make such information public.  The Department of Transportation’s short list includes BikeNow, a Boston-based company founded in response to the bike share RFP; Veloway, whose parent company Veoila Transportation, runs the city’s MBTA rail; and Public Bike System, which brought BIXI to Montreal.  Regardless of its choice, things are already looking up for Boston bike share as, with Freedman’s improvements, Bicycling magazine changed its tune and in 2008 named Boston a future best city for biking.  Time will tell whether or not that plays out to be true, but we’re all eyes and ears, hopeful that a large-scale program à la BIXI sticks in the US.