Bike sharing might debut in Raleigh

Bike-sharing programs have been popping up recently in major cities across the country and on UNC’s campus — and Raleigh could be next.

Bike-sharing is a system of public transportation that allows people, for a relatively small fee, to grab a bike at a nearby kiosk, ride it around the city and drop it off at another bike kiosk.

Daniel Rodriguez, director of the Center for Sustainable Community Design at the UNC Institute for the Environment, said while the concept is popular, it’s not necessarily profitable.

“The usage tends to be fairly high, but unfortunately it is a money-losing operation,” he said. “So it requires a lot of subsidies like most transportation services.”

A feasibility study conducted in Raleigh in the summer of 2014 found that a bike-share program would be beneficial and worthwhile.

Jennifer Baldwin, bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for BikeRaleigh, said although the program will not be funded this year, discussion on ways to implement the program will continue.

“So we’re at the stage right now where we’re just recommending a business model, the number of stations there will be, how much this is going to cost and trying to ask the question of how are we going to get the funding,” she said.

Baldwin said a discussion about implementation that was scheduled with the Raleigh City Council on Tuesday was canceled due to weather, so it will likely be postponed until March or April.

Meanwhile, some UNC students are hoping to expand the University’s bike-share program, Tar Heel Bikes, which was founded in the fall of 2012.

Adeyemi Olatunde, a freshman who is a part of Tar Heel Bikes, said the program currently has 30 bikes for student use in Craige, Ehringhaus, Morrison and Hinton James residence halls.

“It’s about getting people to use bikes as a mode of transport around campus. You can use the bikes to go to Carrboro. You can use them on weekends to go to the farmers market,” Olatunde said.

Katharine Mather, Tar Heel Bikes co-director, said though the Student Fee Advisory Subcommittee denied the program’s application for additional funding from the student transit fee, the group hopes to apply again in 2016 and expand.

Mather said a campaign was launched last spring with the goal to get 2,000 signatures on a petition to expand the program.

“The expanded system would be about 80 to 100 bikes. We would probably have 10 or so locations around campus,” Mather said.

She said bike-sharing offers a convenient travel option for students besides buses and walking.

“Right now, if you want to go around campus, you can either walk up quite a large hill or you can wait for the NU or the U or RU, or whatever, and those are very crowded and it comes every 15 minutes,” Mather said. “So if you need to get somewhere in a rush, it’s really difficult.”

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