After surviving a lull in ridership in the course of the pandemic, Biketown, an electrical rental bike service, expanded its protection space to North and East Portland neighborhoods Monday.
Biketown is a collaboration of the Portland Bureau of Transportation and Nike, with operations supplied by experience hailing firm Lyft. PBOT spokesperson Dylan Rivera mentioned that when the COVID-19 pandemic began, bicycling had a surge in reputation however Biketown took a giant hit.
“Initially in 2020, ridership on Biketown and many bike share systems nationwide dropped significantly because people were traveling less, and there was a lot of uncertainty initially about safety with the pandemic,” Rivera mentioned.
But in September 2020, PBOT launched an e-bike system, changing a fleet of 1,000 eight-speed bikes to 1,500 pedal-assist electrical bikes.
“People are finding that these electric bikes are really fun to use,” Rivera mentioned. “You can incorporate these e-bikes into your life much more easily than you could with the original bikes because you can go farther faster, you can go up hills much more easily than you could with a conventional eight-speed bike.”
Rivera says a yr later, ridership was again to pre-pandemic ranges.
“What we’ve learned as a nation, as a society, is that biking and walking outdoors are some of the safest things you can do in this pandemic,” he mentioned.
Biketown’s newest growth follows a survey that highlighted rider fairness and the place new boundaries for the program ought to go.
With the East Portland growth, Biketown’s service space now consists of parts or all of Hazelwood, Mill Park, Parkrose and Parkrose Heights. In North Portland, the expanded service space brings within the University of Portland and downtown St. Johns. It additionally consists of all or giant sections of the Arbor Lodge, Cathedral Park, Kenton, Portsmouth and University Park neighborhoods. PBOT workers used the bureau’s fairness matrix to establish areas of best want for public providers.
“Extending the service area farther into East Portland and North Portland seemed like something we could all agree on because we all really want to bring the convenience and joys of bike sharing to communities of color, and communities in Portland that have gone underserved by the transportation system,” Rivera mentioned.
The growth will ultimately embody Biketown stations the place folks can conveniently hire and drop off the bikes. Until these nodes are constructed, folks can use the bikes and go away them within the new service areas with out having to pay a further out of service space price. There isn’t any price to the general public by means of the subsequent a number of years, because of Nike’s dedication of $18 million at Biketown’s inception in 2016.