Will You Be the Chicagoan to Take Divvy’s Ten-Millionth Ride?
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Take a photo during your next bike-share trip, post it on Twitter with the hashtag #DivvyMillionaire, and tag @StreetsblogCHI. We'll run the best pix in an upcoming post.
Recent Streetsblog CHICAGO posts about bike share
West Garfield and Austin Got Divvy Bikes Last Week. Will Anyone Use Them?
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[Last November the Chicago Reader launched a weekly transportation column written by Streetsblog Chicago editor John Greenfield. This partnership allows Streetsblog to extend the reach of our livable streets advocacy. We syndicate a portion of the column on the day it comes out online; you can read the remainder on the Reader’s website or in […]
Popular “Transit” App Now Enables Bypassing the Divvy Kiosk
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A new partnership between Divvy and Transit app, you can now get 24-hour Divvy passes and ride codes via smartphone. This means that people who have just signed up for an annual membership won’t have to wait for a key to arrive in the mail before they can start using the blue bikes. It also means […]
Divvy Is Hiking Membership Fee to $99, Adding an Installment Option
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The bad news: Divvy’s announced today that their annual membership fee will be rising from $75 to $99, starting on February 1. The good news: The bike-share system will be offering a new option of paying for a membership in monthly installments. When Divvy launched back in June 2013, yearly memberships cost $75 and 24-hour […]
Two Very Different Ways Bike-Share Benefits Transit
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A new survey [PDF] by researchers at UC Berkeley and published in Access Magazine sheds light on how bike-share systems interact with transit. Researchers Susan Shaheen and Elliot Martin surveyed more than 10,000 bike-share riders in Montreal, Toronto, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, and Washington, DC. Like previous surveys have shown, Shaheen and Martin found that a significant number of bike-share users reduce car use. But their […]
Could Longer Rental Times Help Divvy Appeal to More Chicagoans?
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While visiting Vienna, Austria, I gave their CityBike Wien bike-share system a spin and found it has a couple of advantages over Chicago’s Divvy system. CityBike Wien is dirt cheap, with a one-time registration fee of only one euro, about a dollar, compared to $9.95 for a Divvy day pass. And the first hour of […]
Despite Saturday’s Tragic Crash, Divvy Has a Strong Safety Record
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Last weekend, medical student Travis Persaud was struck by two different drivers while riding a Divvy bike on Lake Shore Drive, a limited-access highway where cycling is prohibited. Persaud, 25, is the only person ever to have been critically injured while riding bike-share in Chicago since the system launched in June 2013. Around 2:50 a.m. […]
Alta Bicycle Share Has New Owners, New CEO, New Expansion Plans
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It’s official: Alta Bicycle Share, the company that runs Citi Bike, has a new owner, an infusion of cash, and a fresh face at the top — longtime transit executive Jay Walder. At a press conference this afternoon, the new team promised to correct Citi Bike’s blunders and double the system’s size by the end […]
Sources: Alta Buyout a Done Deal; Citi Bike Fleet to Double
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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 […]
Are Lawbreaking Divvy Riders Really Causing Major Safety Issues?
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[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 […]
Does Chicago Deserve to Be Ranked the Nation’s Second Best Bike City?
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When I heard that Bicycling Magazine gave Chicago second place in its “America’s Best Bike Cities” ratings, just behind New York and two slots above Portland, I was puzzled. However, I’m starting to warm up to the idea that our city and NYC deserve credit for taking bold action to improve cycling. Few people would […]