The Indianapolis Bikeshare program was revealed last Friday at well attended press conference in the Fountain Square cultural district where it was announced that the program will launch in just a few short weeks – Tuesday April 22nd is go live day!
We are seeing stations already being placed throughout downtown. Â This is the one just outside Bankers Life Fieldhouse.
Bikes may be checked out between 5:30 am and midnight 12 months of the year. Â There are two types of memberships – daily & annual. Â The below graphic does a great job of outlining the charges for each.
As you can see, the pricing structure is designed to encourage high turnover and shorter rides within the footprint of the system.
A donation by the Herbert Simon Family Foundation puts the Indiana Pacers as the naming sponsor for the program. Â The program was also funded by a grant from the US Department of Transportation.
The bicycles are provided by B-Cycle, a joint venture of Trek Bicycles, Humana Inc. & Crispin Porter + Bogusky.  This means that visitors that have a B-Cycle membership from other cities may use the bikes here as well and avoid paying the daily fee.
It also means that if you purchase an annual membership here in Indy, you may use the bicycles in the other “B-Connected” cities which currently include: Â Austin, Boulder, Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale), Charlotte, Denver, Des Moines, Fort Worth, Hawaii, Houston, Kansas City, Madison, Nashville, Omaha, Salt Lake City, San Antonio & Spartanburg.
We’ll do a more in-depth overview of the bicycles soon, but know that features include a step through frame design, 3 speed grip shifting, integrated lock, handlebar basket, fenders, rear rack & basket pannier, platform pedals, kickstand, bell & Cultural Trail map graphic.
So where are the bike stations going to be located? Â Click on the image below to load a printable pdf. Â
Scrolling down on the page that hosts this printable map, we also found an interactive map on their website. Â This map not only shows the locations, but also the bike availability & overall capacity at each station. Â Stations will have varying capacity and configurations depending on their location.
There will be 250 bicycles spread across these 25 station locations. Â A quick tally of the station capacities on this interactive map indicates that there is an overall capacity of 332 bike docks at these stations. Â We will see the color coding of the stations changing as they install and test the stations over the next few weeks.
For more information on the system, check out the new website www.pacersbikeshare.org. Â You can also connect with them on Facebook and Twitter.
Seems expensive. I am all for it if people like it but I would never pay that much for a short ride. Bikes are not very expensive to buy. Maybe they are expecting lots of tourists but the focus on short rides kind of screws them for a nice long ride on the cultural trail or monon.
I’ve commented previously that it is a little unfortunate that the cost is at its current rate. Nashville is $50 for an annual membership, $5 daily pass, and you can check it out for 1 HOUR at a time. Especially with it being on the trail you think they would allow for hour long rides. The trick is that you just have to check it into a station before 30 minutes and check out another. You need to keep in mind that they’re mostly designed as commuter bikes to get from A to B.
This pricing seems pretty comparable to what I experience using bikeshare in other cities.
Pat nailed it. If you need the bike for longer than 30 minutes, you can just swing by another station and swap out.
I rode B-Cycle in San Antonio and rode probably 15 miles and went from as far south as the Blue Star Art Center up to the Pearl Brewery which is pretty far north. I never had a bike on the road for more than about 20 minutes.
According to my city councilor, they are already getting additional businesses and cultural entities wanting a station near them, so this could expand pretty quickly if the demand pans out as strongly as it appears at this time.
One thing not mentioned in the article is that B-Cycle has an Android and iOS app that will show you real-time bike availability and can give you GPS guidance to the nearest rack. That map on the basket is pretty killer though.
It is stated that you can use your membership in other cities. What’s stoping me from buying a $50 membership on Nashville’s bcycle site, saving $30 in annual membership, but using it in Indy? Curious how this works. For some reason I thought they weren’t usable in other cities.
Pat – that is a great question. I don’t know for sure, but am guessing there is some type of requirement in the process that would keep you from doing that. I agree it would be beneficial since “home city” rules are used and as you pointed out there are other cities that have less expensive memberships and allow for longer “free” periods of riding than Indy.
The information currently on the Pacers Bikeshare website doesn’t go into detail other than to say there are sharing privileges between cities when you have a membership.
http://www.pacersbikeshare.org/header-nav/about/b-connected/
Will look into it and update as we learn more!
I don’t know, but I would imagine that if they saw they you had a membership for one city and were using it a majority of the time in a different city, they might call and ask you to switch, but I don’t know.
I do know that I purchased my day pass at the kiosk in San Antonio and it gave me an option to buy an annual membership at that time. So perhaps you would have to drive to Nashville to buy the cheaper membership which seems like it wouldn’t really be worth it, especially since I didn’t find the 30 minute limit to be an issue and $30 is less than you would spend on gas round trip to Nashville.
haha, ya I would say driving to do it wouldn’t be worth it.
We can purchase ours online and they send you a B-Cycle card. No in person purchase necessary. The credit card you use to purchase the membership can always be used as your ‘membership card’ to check out bikes in case you forget your bcycle card when out for the day.
I will tell you it gets used quite extensively here, especially for tourists. I’ll be interested to see how it grows in Indy when businesses start taking on sponsor roles to have a station closer to them.
Hopefully wanting to support your local system would stop you.
I guess that’s the foundation of business isn’t is? I tweeted out to Nashville B-Cycle to see what they say. To save money as a debt ridden young professional, I’ll do what I can for now.
After thinking about this some more, I think you could probably do the membership from another city, but I would venture a guess that the time limit of 30 minutes is related to the station, not the membership. So if a Nashville member checked out a bike in Indy, they would get the 30 minute time limit. In any case, from an ethical standpoint, it seems like you would be bilking the taxpayers of Nashville buying that membership.
As for the cost of the membership, the Nashville membership is probably subsidized heavier than the Indy one would be my guess. I could see Nashville, which in my experience doesn’t have as strong of a bike culture, subsidizing it more to entice more people. Indy’s bike culture is pretty strong so requires less incentive. Again, just conjecture.
As for the time period, I think it likely has to do with geography. Indy is flat and its system relatively compact. To bike from FS to IUPUI (the furthest points) would not take 30 minute, even at the most leisurely pace. I would imagine if they expand it to Broad Ripple, Children’s Museum, etc they will probably have to either increase the time. Or perhaps they can adjust the time for certain racks so if you check in or out at the Children’s Museum rack, you get 60 minutes instead.
Very solid thinking here. I agree with you.
There should be a station at each campus housing location for IUPUI as well as a station by Lucas Oil Stadium. The Zoo should have one as well.