Expand Your Mind With Bikeshare

Aloha May! It’s your favorite council member blogger, Nora, and it is finally getting consistently warm and sunny here in Washington D.C. This makes May one of my favorite months because it’s perfect weather for National Bike Month. There is nothing better than a sunny day with a bike-fueled breeze to cool you off. National Bike Month was started in 1956 by the League of American Bicyclists to promote bicycling around the nation, with a Bike to Work/School Week (May 15-21) and Bike to Work/School Day on May 19th.

Even if you don’t own a bike, there are still many ways to participate, such as through bike share programs. Bike share is a system that allows people to access bikes in stations across the city through either single-time payment or with memberships – you can get to a local bike share station by train!

Washington D.C. became the first place in the US to implement a bike share known as SmartDC in 2008, which is now known as Capital Bikeshare. Now, all 50 states have followed suit. Capital Bikeshare is a station-based system where you can pick up and lock up your bike after your trip. However, there are bike share programs that don’t have these docking stations that you may have seen, including JUMP and Lime e-bikes. There are also hybrid systems that allow users to pick up at a station and lock bikes somewhere else combining both reliability and flexibility, such as Divvy Bikes, Blue Bikes in New Orleans, and BIKETOWN in Portland.

Bike share programs aren’t just good to get you where you need to go in a cheaper, sustainable, and time-saving manner, but they also help reduce air pollution making your community healthier. So definitely check out a bike share program if you come across one this month or whenever because biking can be and should be enjoyed all the time! Brian, do you know of any bike share programs? How are you celebrating National Bike Month?

If you want to learn more about your state’s bike share programs, click here.