Urban Denver - Pearl Street Neighborhood, TOD, Transit Station

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by awholeparade

Denver actually had the first large-scale bike sharing system in the country. DC and Minneapolis released theirs right after Denver, and i think the DC system is a bit larger than the other two.

It's all very confusing. Here's a timeline:

2008, August 13: Washington, DC launches "SmartBike", the first bikesharing system in North America. It is a small pilot program with 120 bikes at 10 downtown stations. Everyone agrees it's too small to be useful.

2008, late August - early September (not sure exact dates): Denver and Minneapolis host large but temporary bikesharing systems during the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. The systems are taken out of service after the conventions are over.

2009, May: Montreal launches "Bixi", the first large scale system in North America. It has 3,000 bikes at 300 stations initially, and has since expanded to 5,000 bikes at 400 stations. It is currently the largest bikesharing system in operation in North America.

2010, February: Mexico City launches "Ecobici", the first system in Mexico. It has 1,100 bikes at 86 stations.

2010, April: Denver launches "B-Cycle", the first large scale system in the US. It has about 500 bikes at 50 stations.

2010, June: Minneapolis launches "Nice Ride", with 450 bikes at 58 stations.

2010, September: Washington, DC launches "Capital Bikeshare" with 1,100 bikes at 110 stations in DC and Arlington, VA. It is currently the largest system in the US, but won't be for long.

Boston, San Francisco and New York have large-scale systems in the works for next year. New York is expected to end the "who's biggest" wars for once and for all when they launch their system, which is expected to be 10,000 bikes.

I don't know about expansions in Denver or Minneapolis (I assume they are considering it). In DC the ultimate plans are for about 5,000 bikes.

Paris has the largest system in the world, with 17,000 bikes.

[Paradox21]

Nice! I've never been to to Denver, so it's nice to have some of the layers of mystique peeled away with a thread like this.

[SnyderBock]

Cirrus, what you forget is that Denver did launch a small pilot bike share in downtown Denver for the 2008 DNC, just about a week or so before or maybe right at the same time as the Washington DC pilot launch. However, this too was a small downtown-only bike share with under a dozen stations, much like in DC. The difference is Denver's was a temporary testbed, which was discontinued later that fall (ran into October I believe), whereas DC's pilot program ran up until full-scale launch (if I'm not mistaking). And then of course, in April 2010, they came back and launched the "first large-scale bike share program in the US" in Denver with 50 stations. Later in 2010, DC launched a full-scale system more than twice as large as Denver's with 110 stations.

The B-cycle bike share in Denver, is looking into expanding into Stapleton new urban redevelopment, as well as other inner-ring streetcar suburbs and also a small expansion up there in Boulder. There is potential for growing to several times larger than it is now. It seems I read they would look into expanding by possibly up to 50 more stations, in the next few years.

[Cirrus]

Oh you're right. I forgot about the DNC (and edited the above list to include it and the RNC). I don't exactly know how the bikeshare worked there. Can you explain it? Was it the B-Cycle system, with multiple electronic docking stations and all that? Or was it more low-tech, like traditional tourist bike rental?

There are also a few cities I didn't bother listing that have since added really tiny systems. For example, in July 2010 Chicago launched a 20-bike, 6-station system.

In any event, Denver deserves a lot of credit for being on the progressive cutting edge of this.