Recent Streetsblog CHICAGO posts about Divvy

Why Did Divvy Stations Dance Around River West, Lincoln Square?

By Steven Vance | Nov 21, 2014 | 11 Comments

Divvy bike-share stations were designed to be easy to move around, with their modular construction and off-grid solar power. Sure enough, plenty of Divvy members have had their routines disrupted by station moves lately: 8,000 Divvy members received word this year that stations they’d recently used were on the move. One Divvy member forwarded two […]

CDOT Announces Proposed Divvy Locations for 33rd Ward

By John Greenfield | Oct 27, 2014 | 2 Comments

At the 33rd Ward transportation committee meeting last Thursday, deputy transportation commissioner Sean Wiedel presented the locations for nine proposed Divvy stations in the Northwest Side district. Alderman Deb Mell has approved all of the spots. The locations include the three westernmost Brown Line stations and two sites near Horner Park, plus locations near Montrose/Kedzie, […]

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 […]

Motorists Respond to Stranded Divvy Rider With Concern, Not Abuse

By John Greenfield | Oct 15, 2014 | 45 Comments

Remember the unfortunate young woman who found herself pedaling a Divvy bike on Lake Shore Drive last November? Instead of offering to help the endangered rider, a couple of people driving by thought it was funny to shoot a cell phone video of her, while repeatedly calling her a “dumb b—-.” After the clip went […]

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 […]

Did Chicago Bike Commuting Really Dip in 2013?

By Steven Vance and Payton Chung | Sep 24, 2014 | 7 Comments

The Census Bureau released American Community Survey estimates for 2013 last week, which report that the number of people biking to work in Chicago has decreased from 1.6 percent in 2012 to 1.4 percent in 2013. This could well prove to be a one-year blip against a broader, multi-year trend that has seen bike commuting nearly […]

Pullman Pouter: Konkol Gripes That His Neighborhood Is a Transit Desert

By John Greenfield | Sep 19, 2014 | 17 Comments

It’s always a chuckle to read DNAinfo.com columnist Mark Konkol’s misguided musings on transportation issues. When the city installed protected bike lanes on Kinzie, in front of the Sun-Times office where Konkol worked at the time, he wrote a series of articles blasting the PBLs as “bunk” that caused gridlock for drivers. “They’re a giant […]

CDOT Previews Chicago’s Next Round of New Bikeways

By John Greenfield | Sep 12, 2014 | 21 Comments

The quarterly meetings of the Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council are a good place to get up to speed on Chicago’s latest bike developments. Wednesday’s meeting was no exception, with updates on bike lane construction, off-street trails, Divvy bike-share, and more. The sessions take place during business hours, but if your schedule allows you to attend, […]

Ridership Profile Shifts Slightly After Divvy’s First Full Summer

By Steven Vance | Sep 3, 2014 | 9 Comments

The monthly count of bike-share trips in Chicago peaked this July at 410,392 trips, according to a new data release from Divvy. Trips then declined by five percent from July to August, which is traditionally a slow month due to vacations. While there’s now a full year of trip data on Divvy, the staged rollout […]

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, […]

The Pros and Cons of Divvy’s New Expansion Map

By John Greenfield | Aug 22, 2014 | 32 Comments

In mid-July, Alta Bicycle Share’s Mia Birk told Marketplace that, due to pipeline issues, new bikes for the systems Alta runs probably wouldn’t arrive until 2015. At the time, I predicted that the Chicago Department of Transportation would soon announce that it wouldn’t be able to expand the Divvy system from 3,000 to 4,750 cycles […]

“Walk To Transit” Targets 20 CTA Stations For Quick Safety Fixes

By Steven Vance | Aug 20, 2014 | 11 Comments

A new “Walk To Transit” initiative by the Chicago Department of Transportation will target 20 CTA stations for a slew of simple pedestrian infrastructure upgrades. People walking to several Blue Line stations on the west side and along Milwaukee Avenue, along with stations on the south and north sides, will see safety and usability improvements like re-striped […]

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