Bike Share Finally Comes to San Diego

After a year of delays, DecoBike Share finally launched a little over a week ago on January 30th. KPBS’ Claire Trageser had an excellent write-up about the bike share program,

Bike share users can buy monthly memberships for $20 a month, which gives you unlimited access to the bikes for 30 minutes or less. If you keep one bike for longer than 30 minutes, you will be charged $5 for every 30 minutes.

You can also buy a monthly membership for $30, which lets you keep the same bike for up to an hour without extra charges.

These memberships require a three-month commitment. You can also buy a one-month membership for $50, or pay $5 for 30 minutes; $7 for an hour; or $15 for a day without a membership.

Members are given a key pod that they can hold up to the bike dock to release the bike. Non-members pay for bikes at a kiosk using a credit card.

As of February 11th, the bike share program has deployed 399 bicycles, opened up 65 stations, and riders have taken a total of 5,000 rides.

Unfortunately, one of the stations at 28th and B has been removed from service after a driver somehow managed to land their vehicle on top of one of the stations early last Saturday morning.  Kevin, who writes at Pedestrian Access, wrote a bit more about this incident,

The fact that there were no cyclists around the Golden Hill station last night after bars closed is part of the reason why nobody was hurt. DecoBike is spared the PR nightmare because nobody was using this station at the time. Nor, as I’ve been saying, will anyone ever be.

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By the time the sun came up in front of Starbucks this morning, there was no evidence of Decostation 143 or the destruction from a few hours early. Cars  parked in its place, and patrons sat on the patio slurping their frapachinos wondering if that whole bike-share thing was just a figment of their imaginations.

To my knowledge, the San Diego Police Department has not yet found the driver. Pretty remarkable if you think about that fact, since I assumed a driver’s license and a license plate would make it much easier way to find the driver. While no bystander was hurt in the car vs. bike share station crash last weekend, I wonder what the response would have been had someone been hurt. My hope is that it wouldn’t be an opportunity for victim blaming that the SDPD seems to have taken on lately. That approach is very unfortunate. The burden of responsibility ought to lie on the entity causing the most harm. A person walking doesn’t bear such a burden, and neither does an inert bike share station. I hope the SDPD will re-evaluate their approach to making our streets safe and focus on educating drivers on their responsibilities for being on our public spaces, our roadways.

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Still we do have something new to celebrate in the city, and more people on bicycles is a good thing for everyone. So hope you will join me on a ride to the Hillcrest Farmers Market on a DecoBike later this month.

Check out our calendar for more details.

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Update:  UT-San Diego also had a good piece on DecoBike.

Doug Porter at the San Diego Free Press has also written a great post on DecoBike and other legislation around bicycling.

Update on 2/15/2015: The station at 28th and B has been replaced as reported on the SDBikeCommuter Forums.