Bike Share

Photo from bike-sharing.blogspot.com

The official start of The National Bike Challenge, a nationwide effort to increase bicycle ridership through camaraderie and friendly competition was yesterday.  To commemorate the kick-off, Alta Planning and Design was in Philadelphia displaying the wares of their successful Bike Share program.

I met with Fionnuala Quinn and Charlie Denney who were excited to tell me about their bikes and their expanding Bike Share program. Alta Bicycle Share designs, deploys, and manages bicycle share programs and systems worldwide. They launched and manage Melbourne Bike Share in Melbourne, Australia, Capital Bikeshare in Washington, DC, Hubway in Boston, MA, and Chattanooga Bicycle Transit System in Chatanooga, TN.

Alta is an exciting company who in addition to there planning and design efforts are, at any given time, actively working on several bike-share projects and studies for jurisdictions and companies interested in bringing bike share to their communities. Alta has locations all over the country - Pacific Northwest, California, the mountains and the desert, Midwest, and up and down the east coast and are considered experts in pedestrian and bicycle planning, green space design, and research and innovation in planning and design.

I had the opportunity to intern for Chuck Flink at Greenways Inc., which is now Greenways/Alta, in Durham NC. It was a terrific experience and highly recommend it to any aspiring planners or landscape architects out there. 

As Emily and I have continued our discussions on the definitions of "Green Infrastructure" we definitely consider the impact and importance of bicycles on urban design. Alta is conducting research on how a seemingly nano-intervention of a bike share can help transform the way people experience the city but perhaps more importantly how a city infrastructure's will morph in response to that use. Stay tuned!