A personally busy bureaucratic week has me appreciating all the hard work that has gone into making the upcoming expansion of bike share in Albuquerque a reality. As reported by Nancy Tipton at the Journal, the current BICI program of 75 bikes at 15 stations will bloom to 250 bikes available at 50 stations around town.
The expansion will continue the BICI partnership with Zagster, but the system will become “dockless.” This new bike share model, centered on reducing/eliminating costly semi-permanent stations, is quite the bike share rage, as you probably know. Here’s how Zagster explains its new variant, code-name “Pace.”
“We are dockless without the drawbacks,” says Zagster CEO Timothy Ericson. “If you’re a city and you want to bring in bike-share, you used to have to choose between the expensive dock-based model, or these unsustainable companies with loose bikes that are spread all over the streets and lost.”
While it will be interesting to see how the Pace model performs here (and elsewhere) over time, we can’t overlook the simple kick it is to have expanded bike share in Burque. Valerie Hermanson and the folks at MRCOG (and elsewhere) who have jumped the hoops and crossed the “Ts” to make this possible are to be commended for their hard work and bureaucratic patience.
And you are to be commended to, if you make it to one of the two upcoming public input sessions regarding where YOU would like to see the new stations (that aren’t stations in the classic bike share dock station sense), and/or send comments to MRCOG at the email address linked below:
• Nob Hill Shop N’ Stroll Dec. 7, 5-10 p.m. A booth will be set up in front of Slice Parlor (3410 Central SE).
• Open house Dec. 8, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Mid-Region Council of Governments (809 Copper NW).
Looking forward to seeing all these new bikes at all these new stations, that aren’t stations as we know them, in all sorts of new places around town soon. Perhaps by then I’ll be out from under all this bureaucratic work and can actually get around to riding one of these “Pace” bikes. Or two.
Have a good weekend, everybody. Hope we get a minute or hour to ride a bike, take a hike or just get away from the computer.
P.S.: The totally unrelated photo taken in downtown Aspen last week is just here to remind us: “Yes, we were in downtown Aspen on vacation only a week ago, today.” Seems eons ago.
But speaking of “Active Transportation,” did you know Roaring Fork Valley (Aspen, Carbondale, Glenwood Springs) has Bus Rapid Transit? Yeah, just like A.R.T. (although the busses aren’t electric). Moreover, the Valley also has a bike share program running from Aspen to Basalt.
See, the photo below has everything to do with today Better Burque post…
Better Burque 