Recent Streetsblog CHICAGO posts about bike share

Despite Saturday’s Tragic Crash, Divvy Has a Strong Safety Record

By John Greenfield | Nov 24, 2014 | 23 Comments

Last weekend, medical student Travis Persaud was struck by two different drivers while riding a Divvy bike on Lake Shore Drive, a limited-access highway where cycling is prohibited. Persaud, 25, is the only person ever to have been critically injured while riding bike-share in Chicago since the system launched in June 2013. Around 2:50 a.m. […]

Alta Bicycle Share Has New Owners, New CEO, New Expansion Plans

By Stephen Miller | Oct 29, 2014 | No Comments

It’s official: Alta Bicycle Share, the company that runs Citi Bike, has a new owner, an infusion of cash, and a fresh face at the top — longtime transit executive Jay Walder. At a press conference this afternoon, the new team promised to correct Citi Bike’s blunders and double the system’s size by the end […]

Sources: Alta Buyout a Done Deal; Citi Bike Fleet to Double

By Brad Aaron | Oct 27, 2014 | No Comments

The REQX purchase of Alta bodes well for bike-share in NYC and beyond. Photo: Brad Aaron The buyout of Alta Bicycle Share rumored since July is finally a done deal. REQX Ventures, an affiliate of the Related Companies and its Equinox unit, and Alta Bicycle Share, the company that operates Citi Bike, have agreed to […]

Are Lawbreaking Divvy Riders Really Causing Major Safety Issues?

By John Greenfield | Oct 7, 2014 | 49 Comments

[This article also ran in Checkerboard City, John’s column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.] Chicago’s master bike-baiter, Tribune columnist John Kass, was one of the first local pundits to warn the public about the dangers of Divvy. “I can’t stand those Divvy bike people,” he griped in an online video […]

Does Chicago Deserve to Be Ranked the Nation’s Second Best Bike City?

By John Greenfield | Sep 5, 2014 | 8 Comments

When I heard that Bicycling Magazine gave Chicago second place in its “America’s Best Bike Cities” ratings, just behind New York and two slots above Portland, I was puzzled. However, I’m starting to warm up to the idea that our city and NYC deserve credit for taking bold action to improve cycling. Few people would […]

Divvy Is No Cautionary Tale — It’s a Model for Other Bike-Share Systems

By John Greenfield | Aug 27, 2014 | 19 Comments

Yesterday, the Tribune ran an opinion piece slamming the Divvy funding model, written by Diana Sroka Rickert from the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative think tank. Rickert argued that Milwaukee’s brand-new Bublr bike-share system, named after the local term for a water fountain, used a superior method because much of the funding came from private donors, […]

Alta Chief: Bike-Share Expansions Unlikely in 2014

By Payton Chung | Jul 17, 2014 | No Comments

Despite continually growing ridership, Alta Bicycle Share-operated bike-share systems across America will probably not be adding bikes or docks this year. The bankruptcy of Montreal-based Public Bike Share Company, known as Bixi, which developed and manufactured the equipment that Alta’s systems use, has disrupted the supply chain that numerous cities were pinning their expansion plans […]

How Divvy Stacks Up Against Bike-Share in the Netherlands and Spain

By Steven Vance | May 20, 2014 | 12 Comments

Last month, I had the chance to use bike-share systems in two Dutch cities and Seville, Spain. The systems – OV-fiets in Rotterdam and Nijmegen and Sevici in Seville – differ from one another and from Chicago’s Divvy system in several key ways. Together, they make for an instructive comparison about how our friends in other countries get around. […]

How About Some More Carrying Capacity on Divvy Bikes?

By Daniel Ronan | May 7, 2014 | 31 Comments

With Divvy slated to expand by 175 stations this year, there’s an unprecedented opportunity to increase bike ridership in Chicago. There’s also an opportunity to rethink the Divvy bike design. A shortcoming I’ve noticed about Divvy, and other systems that use bicycles supplied by Bixi, is the lack of carrying capacity. The bikes feature a […]

Ice Ice Divvy: How Has the System Performed During This Brutal Winter?

By John Greenfield | Mar 11, 2014 | 15 Comments

[This piece ran last week in Checkerboard City, my column in Newcity magazine, which hits the street on Wednesday evenings. After yesterday’s gorgeous weather, with temperatures in the 50s, I was concerned the piece might seem a bit dated today if I syndicated it on Streetsblog. Fortunately, six-to-eight inches of snow are predicted for this […]

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