Boulder B-cycle

Nederland is located in Boulder County, which is about the most bike-crazy place I have ever lived.  Everyone has a bike, rides a bike — sometimes it can feel like there are more bicyclists on the roads than drivers.  Each day as I drive Foothills Parkway, the road from Boulder to Rocky Mountain National Park, I drive alongside packs of cyclists riding the roads.  So, it’s not really a big surprise that Boulder would have one of the largest bicycle sharing programs of any city, Boulder B Cycle.

One of the perks I receive as a county employee is membership in the Boulder B Cycle.  For those who either don’t live in a B Cycle city, or have never heard of it, B Cycle is a bicycle sharing program for commuting around town.  It’s not meant as an all day rental program, but as a short term bike sharing program to get around.  The basics of the program are that you become a member, either by the day, the week, the month or annually.  Once you are a member, you get a card that allows you to check out a bike from various stations around town.  These stations are solar-powered, and have 8-10 corrals where bikes are locked in.  When you wave the card, it unlocks and releases the bike.  Once you have the bike, you have 30 minutes to ride the bike before returning it to another station around town.  Boulder B Cycle  has 38 stations located in and around Boulder.  You can keep checking out and returning bikes as often as you want during any given day and throughout the year.  However, if you exceed the 30 minutes, you start to incur surcharges of $3 for every half hour.  The idea is to promote short term riding to get around town, and not encourage people to keep a bike for long-term use, thereby making the most amount of bikes available.

B Cycle was launched here in Colorado following the 2008 Democratic National Convention as a partnership between Trek Bicycle, Humana, and Crispin, Porter and Bogusky (an ad agency).  During the convention, a bike sharing program called Freewheelin’ made 1000 bicycles available to delegates to get around Denver during the convention.  It was so successful that the committee made a a special donation to initiate a permanent bike sharing program.  The inaugural program was launched in Denver on Earth Day in April, 2010 with 500 bicycles and has been wildly successful.  B Cycle now operates in 29 cities around the country.

For me, what I find is that it makes it even more enticing to use public transportation.  We are fortunate in Nederland to have a public bus route that runs between Nederland and Boulder, and as residents we receive a free RTD Ecopass (see earlier post).  But sometimes I don’t want to take the bus, because I’m still a ways from my eventual destination (doctor, store, etc.).  But there is a B Cycle station right at the mouth of Boulder Canyon at the first bus stop there, so I can get off the bus, wave my magic B Cycle card, and grab a bike to get to where I’m going.  It gives me a lot more freedom, and I find myself enjoying going to town more on my days off, because I don’t have to deal with driving down the canyon, something I do every day for work.

B Cycle — another way for Coloradans to get around, and shrink that carbon foot print just a little more.