Chicago is next to jump on bike-share bus

Close on the heels of New York City, Chicago has become the next big American city to announce plans to launch a bike share system.

Officials there say a bike rental program using 3,000 bicycles at 300 stations will be launched next summer.

An operator and bike-maker still need to be chosen, as well as the areas of the city that will be served. Currently, a small pilot project called Chicago B-cycle is operating in the city. It's a partnership of Humana, Trek and Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

The other big US bike share vendor is Alta Bicycle Share, which uses the Montreal-based Bixi bicycle system.

Smaller than New York

The bike-share system will start out smaller than the 10,000-bike proposal announced recently for New York City, also scheduled to launch next summer.

The Chicago system, however, will start out larger than Capital BikeShare (their bikes are shown above), which launched with 1,100 bikes at 114 stations in Washington DC and Arlington, Virginia, last year. [Oct. 13 update: Alexandria City Council approves joining BikeShare system. Six bike stations with 54 bicycles will be installed by Spring 2012. ]

That system marked its one-year anniversary this week by hosting the 1 millionth rider. During that time, one user has made 1,258 trips — about 3 a day. The bike exchange kiosk at Massachusetts Avenue and Dupont Circle NW saw the most action, with 40,000 trips originating there.

Other systems

Elsewhere, Nice Ride Minnesota in Minneapolis has grown to 1,200 bike at 138 stations, and Denver B-cycle has more than 500 bicycles at 51 locations in service.

The newest bike-share systems include The Hubway in Boston with 600 bikes at 61 stations and San Antonio's system with 140 bikes at 14 stations.

Reduce car trips

From the description printed in the Tribune, it sounds like Chicago's bike share program will operate like the others to reduce the number of short-distance car trips around the city.

Users will be charged a flat subscription fee for the year, $75 was proposed, and would be able to use an available bike for 30 minutes for free. Longer rentals would cost more.

Other cities are looking into these programs, which could help clean up the air and reduce congestion in our big cities.