A Bike for the Masses

Is Eau Claire ready for a bikeshare program?

Tom Giffey |

WHEELS DOWN! An Eau Claire City Council member wants the city to explore creating a bikeshare program like this one in Chicago, where a $75 fee gives members unlimited 30-minute rides on these nifty blue bikes.
WHEELS DOWN! An Eau Claire City Council member wants the city to explore creating a bikeshare program like this one in Chicago, where a $75 fee gives members unlimited 30-minute rides on these nifty blue bikes.

Imagine this: You’d like to check out a new restaurant on your lunch break but it’s just a little too far to walk. Or you want to take a quick pedal to the park but left your bike at home. Or you don’t have access to a reliable car but need to run some errands quickly.

All these scenarios – and dozens more – are reasons why it would be handy to have a bikeshare program nearby. What is bike sharing? It’s just what it sounds like: an organized system that allows paying members to share bikes within a specific geographic area. The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center at the University of North Carolina offers this more detailed definition: “Bike sharing is an innovative transportation program, ideal for short distance point-to-point trips providing users the ability to pick up a bicycle at any self-serve bike-station and return it to any other bike station located within the system’s service area.” Currently, there are more than 80 bikeshare systems in the United States – most in large cities (New York, Chicago, Washington) but sometimes in smaller ones (such as Northfield, Minn., and Montevallo, Ala.).

“If we’ve got all these miles of trails, what can the city do to help – what can the community do – to help encourage more people to get out of their cars and hop on bicycles more and maybe hop on public transportation more?” – Catherine Emmanuelle, Eau Claire City Council member, on the possibility of a bikeshare program in Eau Claire

Now that you’re up to speed (no pun intended), there’s a possibility that Eau Claire could have its own bikeshare program in the future. City Councilwoman Catherine Emmanuelle has asked city staffers to explore the idea, a request that will likely lead to a feasibility study later this year. Emmanuelle attended a bikeshare conference in Chicago last summer, and in December gave a presentation on the concept to the city’s Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Commission.

“I think people are really intrigued about the topic,” Emmanuelle says. A bikeshare program could potentially address various transportation challenges faced by the city – including demand for alternative transportation methods and downtown parking concerns – while also encouraging exercise.

“If we’ve got all these miles of trails, what can the city do to help – what can the community do – to help encourage more people to get out of their cars and hop on bicycles more and maybe hop on public transportation more?” Emmanuelle asks. There’s also the potential that a bikeshare system would be helpful for low-income people whose access to transportation may be limited, she adds.

Among other things, bikeshare programs nationwide are touted as helping solve the “last mile” problem: How do you get from home to a public transit stop and/or from the transit stop to work? While specifics vary widely, bikeshare systems typically involve creating stations around a community from which bikes can be borrowed for short periods (typically 30 or 60 minutes) by authorized users with special keys or cards. When the time limit is up, the user must return the bike to a station or risk paying overtime charges. Users pay to use the bikes on an annual, monthly, or per-use basis.

Could such a system – which seems to have caught on in dense, populous places such as the Twin Cities or Chicago – work in a comparatively small city like Eau Claire? That was a key question considered by the Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Commission, which voted unanimously in support of a feasibility study. “It would be awesome if it was in place” – particularly downtown – “but is this the right time? Can we afford it? How do we keep it going?” asks commission chairman Bob Eierman.

Emmanuelle agrees that such questions are critical, which is why she wants the city to undertake the study. Such a study, she hopes, would help answer the fundamental question of whether or not people would use a bikeshare system. Furthermore, it could explore how to fund such a system (with public, private, or nonprofit funds) and whether local health care establishments would be interested in playing a role (for example, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota is a major sponsor of the Twin Cities’ bikeshare system).

Dave Solberg, Eau Claire city engineer, says he expects the city to seek bids for a feasibility study early this year. He says a bike sharing system could help the city better manage traffic demand – if it proves feasible in the first place. Paying for such a system could involve public funding or money from grants, the private sector, or even educational institutions (such as UW-Eau Claire) that could be part of the system, Solberg says.

Examining the potential for a bikeshare is timely considering the city is studying parking demand downtown in anticipation of building a new parking ramp, Emmanuelle says, adding, “A bikeshare feasibility (study) is certainly not because of the proposed ramp, however as the city looks to address parking strategies, a bikeshare program is one aspect of transit development management strategies that can help the big picture when it comes to parking and ultimately, improving quality of life for citizens.”

Want to learn more about the bikeshare concept? Check out pedbikeinfo.org/programs/promote_bikeshare.cfm.