Last weekend, Richard Rodriguez lounged in the grass on the Museum Campus, smoking a cigarette and enjoying a rare August breeze outside of the Lollapalooza festival. Visiting from Mexico, he and his girlfriend were contemplating renting one of the 21 bicycles lined up at the new B-cycle station located south of the Shedd Aquarium.

“We’re thinking about taking a tour around the park,” Rodriguez said. “I think maybe it’s a little expensive if you want to be riding around all day, but for a couple hours, it’s OK.”

Some kinks are still being worked out, but city dwellers and tourists alike have started riding through lakefront neighborhoods using bikes rented from a new bike sharing program that launched on July 30.

Called B-cycle, proponents hope that having rental bikes conveniently at hand will inspire healthy lifestyles and alleviate congestion in car-clogged streets. The Bike and Roll rental outfit, in partnership with B-cycle, is operating the program.

Two of B-cycle’s kiosks, where anyone with a credit card or a B-cycle membership can rent a bike — sturdy, pewter-colored machines — are located in the South Loop, at McCormick Place and on the Museum Campus.

The other locations are Buckingham Fountain, 541 N. Fairbanks Court, Daley Plaza and the John Hancock Center. So far, 100 bikes are available to rent.

Bike and Roll said it started the program along and near the lakefront because its dense mixture of tourist attractions, office buildings and shopping spaces. In addition, Bike and Roll can build on its relationship with the park district, which owns a couple of the properties where B-cycle kiosks are located.

By next spring, Bike and Roll hopes to have 30 rental stations throughout the city. Josh Squire, a Bike and Roll manager, said he has already been approached by other organizations interested in hosting bike hubs, including a business with a LEED-certified building in the South Loop.

There are two ways of renting a bike from B-cycle. Dedicated users can purchase memberships online at a rate of $35 a month, or up to $55 for three months, with $10 discounts for students and seniors. Members get their first hour of every ride free then pay an additional $5 per hour.

The casual biker or tourist can plug a credit card into a kiosk and purchase a temporary pass at a rate of $10 for the first hour and $5 for every additional hour, with a maximum fee of $40 per day.

The bikes feature three-gear shifts and front baskets for stashing laptops or groceries. Other amenities include kickstands and cable locks, automatically activating front lights and a step-through frame to accommodate different heights.

“For short trips they’re pretty cool,” Squire said. “And they’re built for that purpose. They’re not meant to replace home bikes or recreation bikes.”

Squire sees the bikes as ideal for short errands during the workday, and, with the system’s eventual expansion to transportation and commercial hubs, a solution to commuters’ needs.

“Say you commute via Metra and you want to pick up a bike at the station and get to the … healthcare complex where you work. You could take a bike, get to work quickly, avoid polluting the environment and get a little workout in the morning,” he said.

This was close to what Richard Foxman had in mind as he rolled into the Daley Plaza B-cycle station after a lunch-time trip to his doctor’s office last Friday. Foxman, who works downtown, signed up for a three-month membership as soon as he heard about the program.

“I just used it for the first time, and it’s fantastic, very easy to use,” said Foxman, who often bikes to work, but had taken the train that Friday. “I wanted to save money and get exercise and be outside — all three.”

One complication: helmets are not available at the B-cycle stations. Riders will need to bring their own or purchase them at one of the manned Bike and Roll stations throughout the city or at a nearby bike store.

“We looked into that issue for hours and hours with lawyers and everything,” said Squire. “There was just no way to do it.”

Squire said business had been good in the first days of operation.

“People are renting bikes and the convention season hasn’t kicked in yet,” he said.

From Montreal to Barcelona, many cities are intrigued by bike sharing programs. A sharing option that also includes B-cycle as a partner debuted this April in Denver, and it may offer a glimpse at what’s to come in Chicago.

Operated by a non-profit, the Denver programs offer 43 stations across the city. Rates in Denver are less expensive than here, with annual memberships available at $65. A one-day pass costs $5, with incremental hourly usage fees of $1.10 for up to three hours and up to $4.10 for every hour thereafter.

That fee structure depends on the fundraising made possible by its non-profit status, according to Parry Burnap, director of Denver Bike Sharing. Aside from one federal block grant, the Denver program relies on gifts and grants from corporate sponsors.

Squire said the Chicago program’s rates are comparable to those in many European cities, and he points out that parking in the city can be pricier.

“Our prices are definitely comparable to other bike share programs,” he said. “Most bike share programs only give the first half hour for free, whereas we give the entire hour for free,” for members.

“If you look at that factor,” Squire said, “it’s pretty affordable.”

After studying ridership patterns in Denver, Burnap was startled to find that so far, of the 43,400 rides clocked as of August 5, casual one-time purchases are outnumbering long-term memberships by a ratio of 12 to 1.

Siim Soot, director of the Urban Transportation Center at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said that Census data reveal a remarkable increase in bike ridership in the Chicagoland over the past couple decades.

More than 16,000 people in Cook County were commuting to work on bikes, according to combined U.S. Census numbers from 2006 and 2008, the most recent data available, Soot said.

Similar figures from 2000 and 1990 put that number at 9,000 and 5,000 respectively.

“There is a market for that kind of rental activity, although for basic commuting needs you can buy a used bike of your own for very cheap,” he said.

A challenge for bike sharing programs here remains the larger conflict between vehicular and bike traffic.

“The biggest hazard for bikers in this city is cars parked along the curb — either opening doors or pulling out from curbs. We really need more clearly marked lanes, just for bikes,” Soot said. “If we had the luxury of eliminating parking, that would be the ideal.”

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By Alex from South Loop
Posted: 08/19/2010 3:31 PM

This is a GREAT idea!! I worked in Paris for 3 months in 2009, and was fortunate enough to be able to use their Velib bicycle sharing program. It was amazing and it was free (first 30 min)! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A9lib' If Chicago can pick up steam with bicycle sharing, and turn it into something like the Velib program in Paris, we will cut congestion, pollution, and obesity immeasurably.