Recent Streetsblog CHICAGO posts about bike sharing

The Challenge of Making Divvy Accessible to People Without Bank Accounts

By Steven Vance | Sep 5, 2013 | 40 Comments

To use Divvy you must have a debit or credit card. Currently, there’s no way around that, so even though an annual Divvy pass is a bargain at $75, the system is unavailable for many Chicagoans. A significant share of city households — 12.7 percent — don’t have bank accounts, according to graduate research by […]

Diving Into Divvy Stats: Bike-Share Trips Spike on the Weekend

By John Greenfield | Jul 30, 2013 | 52 Comments

Steven Vance is the self-described “data geek” at Streetsblog Chicago, but even a right-brained type like myself couldn’t help but be intrigued by some recently revealed stats and charts about Divvy bike-share use patterns. Chicago Department of Transportation Deputy Commissioner Scott Kubly shared them during a talk at last week’s Complete Streets Symposium, hosted by […]

South and West Side Residents Discuss Divvy Equity Issues

By John Greenfield | Jul 3, 2013 | 10 Comments

Last month I talked to Scott Kubly, deputy commissioner of the Chicago Department of Transportation, about the city’s efforts to make sure the new Divvy bike-share system benefits all Chicagoans, including those in low-income neighborhoods and/or communities of color. Surveys in bike-share cities like Washington, D.C., and Denver have shown that use of their publicly-funded […]

Pedaling to All 68 Divvy Stations in One Day Was Fun, Not Frustrating

By John Greenfield | Jul 1, 2013 | 43 Comments

In a hurry? Read a shorter version of this piece at Grist.org, an environmental news website. To hear the Chicago Tribune tell it, people who used the Divvy bike-share system on its first day of operations last Friday experienced nothing but headaches. But on Sunday I rode a Divvy to and attempted to dock at […]

CDOT Provides an Update on Efforts to Ensure Divvy System Is Equitable

By John Greenfield | Jun 19, 2013 | 25 Comments

Imagine if almost everybody who rode the Chicago Transit Authority, a public transportation system subsidized with taxpayer money, was Caucasian. Denver found itself in an analogous situation last year, when a survey revealed that, in a city where almost half of residents are people of color, 89.9 percent the people using the publicly funded Denver […]

Eyes on the Street: Divvy Bikes Popping Up Like Daisies

By Steven Vance | Jun 17, 2013 | 38 Comments

I went on a 25-mile bike ride yesterday to check up on livable streets projects around the city (final destination: Lao Beijing for dried chili chicken). On the trip I got a good look at the restriped bike lanes on King Drive in Bronzeville, the conversion of the Garfield Green Line station to a Green/Red/shuttle […]

Divvy Bike-Share Registration Opens at Noon, Station Map Released

By Steven Vance | May 29, 2013 | 37 Comments

Large, green icons represent the 75 stations in Phase 1. View in a larger map. Chicagoans can sign up for “founding” Divvy bike sharing memberships at two levels starting today at noon. Only 4,000 founding level memberships will be available. The “Pedal” founding membership, for $75, includes a limited edition “Founding Member” black key (regular members’ keys will be […]

Divvy Bike-Share Bicycles Make Public Debut at Bike The Drive

By Steven Vance | May 27, 2013 | 29 Comments

Divvy bike-share bicycles were on display at yesterday’s Bike the Drive post-ride festival in Grant Park, giving the public its first peek at the blue bikes which just arrived in town on Saturday. I took a spin around the block with Scott Kubly, deputy commissioner at the Chicago Department of Transportation. This was my first […]

More Bike-Share Locations Revealed; Full List Available Later This Month

By Steven Vance | May 10, 2013 | 5 Comments

Last month we reported on the first bike-share stations locations to be made public. Now more station locations are being revealed every day on the official Divvy Bikes Facebook page, and 1st Ward Alderman Proco “Joe” Moreno has released a map of 19 locations. The Divvy Bikes Facebook page will reveal another location each day, […]

Adapting Car-Share Ads to Market Bike-Share

By Steven Vance | May 7, 2013 | 14 Comments

On a recent trip on my “other bike,” AKA the ‘L,’ I spotted two advertisements promoting Zipcar that could have easily been converted into advertisements for bike-share. Car-share and bike-share serve different purposes, but there’s also some overlap — car-share providers want to capture some trips that you could also make on a public bike. […]

Where Will Bike-Share Stations Go? System Map Begins to Take Shape

By Steven Vance | Apr 26, 2013 | 7 Comments

Chicago’s bike-share system, which will go by the name of Divvy, is on track to launch by the Bike To Work Day Rally on June 14. Divvy will start out with 75 stations in downtown and River North before growing to about 400 stations in an area roughly bounded by Lake Michigan, Devon, California and 63rd. […]

Chicago Gets Ready to “Divvy” Up the Rewards of Large-Scale Bike-Share

By John Greenfield | Apr 25, 2013 | 37 Comments

When I interviewed Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein at the June 2012 Bike to Work Rally, shortly after it was announced that bike-share would probably not launch that year, he promised, “We’ll be launching bike-share in the next six to twelve months.” It now appears that the Chicago Department of Transportation and Alta Bike Share, the […]

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