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To make the upcoming Bike Share initiative work more efficiently and have a greater impact, the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities (MOTU) has partnered with a handful of organizations to make it a robust and desirable transportation option. One such partnership is with the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia (BCGP), which is using grant money to hire Bike Share Ambassadors and a Street Team this month.
Along with being good news for pedestrians, cyclists and SEPTA users, it’s especially beneficial for Point Breeze. The diverse and growing neighborhood will be one of three areas of focus with BCGP’s Better Bike Share Partnership. The other two are in West Philly (focusing on Mantua and Powelton neighborhoods) and North Philly (near Temple University), with the three sections that get Bike Share Ambassador hubs targeted specifically for how Bike Share can benefit low-income Philadelphians.
Better Bike Share Partnership is “a grant-funded effort to make Philadelphia the most equitable and accessible program in the country,” BCGP’s Katie Monroe, who is organizing and hiring folks as one arm of the City’s efforts to make sure Bike Share is easy to access for residents who can benefit from it most, said. “The BGCP piece of this effort is to do a robust public outreach campaign — how to use it, what it is, logistics, reasons to use it. I think we’re looking for people who are good at listening and can explain. It’s not about selling memberships.”
In fact, she said it’s not about hiring ambassadors who’ll strong-arm Point Breeze residents into getting on bikes. No, “we would love to be recruiting go-getters who have creative ideas about connecting. I don’t like using the term ‘convincing people to use it.’ It’s more about equal opportunity to decide if you want to try it.”
To backtrack, Bike Share is already in more than 40 cities nationwide. It’s a system where users can pick up a bike at a station near their home and ride it across the city. Users have access to advanced technology Trek bikes on an hourly basis and deposit their bike at the station nearest to their destination. It gives users more flexibility of transit use — Point Breeze residents, starting this spring, will be able to grab a bike as soon as they wake up and bike to work in Center City without relying on a bus or train schedule.
As MOTU chief of staff Andrew Stober said of the difference between the haves and have nots, “often transportation accounts for a greater percentage of expenses than higher income folks. We can put money back in those [lower-income] pockets that they’re going to spend on their families and neighborhoods.”
The City is making a marked effort to make Bike Share’s effect on poorer neighborhoods a priority.
“The simplest way to say it is we’re launching 20 stations in neighborhoods with a high percentage of low-income residents,” Stober added.
“The Philly system will have a cash option,” Monroe noted, “an option where you’ll be able to sign up on the website, and you’ll get something that you can then take to a retail store and pay in cash there.”
Stober stresses the cash option isn’t the only thing making Bike Share’s efforts to level the field of access special.
“It starts off by just making sure that there are conveniently located stations for people to access it from their homes,” he said.
Memberships, rates for which haven’t yet been released, will be monthly as opposed to annual, something unique to Philly’s Bike Share setup.
Street Team and Bike Share Ambassadors applicants can report to bicyclecoalition.org to apply – the deadlines for application are Feb. 13 and 20, accordingly.
“It’s really about letting users have control over how they financially use Bike Share,” Stober said. “We wanted to make a special effort to make sure that communities with lots of folks who stand to benefit the most were getting extra resources to help connect them to this new system.”
Staff Writer Bill Chenevert at bchenevert@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.
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