Little Rock and North Little Rock moved a step closer to developing a bicycle-sharing program for their downtowns Wednesday.
The board of directors of Metroplan, the area's long-range transportation planning agency, voted to be the contract holder for a two-year bicycle-sharing program that will feature 200 bicycles and 20-25 stations. The program will likely begin operating in March.
Bicycle-sharing systems have been available on a limited basis in Arkansas.
Conway announced its bicycle-sharing program last week. Its first phase will involve a fleet of 20 bicycles and five stations around the city to use for on-demand, local trips.
John Landosky, the bicycle-pedestrian coordinator for Little Rock, called the Metroplan decision a "key step to making our community even more bike-friendly."
The next step will be for Metroplan to sign memorandums of understanding with the cities.
The bicycle-sharing concept has proved to be popular in larger cities around the nation, seen as a way to reduce traffic congestion and pollution, improve public health and benefit the common good.
Until now, bicycle-sharing programs in Arkansas have been limited to corporate and college campuses.
Wal-Mart in Bentonville and Dassault Falcon Jet in Little Rock are among private companies that offer employees bicycle-sharing programs at their facilities. The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville makes its program available to faculty and staff members, and students.
Some cities in Arkansas offer bicycle renting, but generally the bicycles in those programs are required to be returned to the initial rental locations.
True bicycle-sharing programs are designed for short-distance, point-to-point trips, allowing users to pick up a bicycle at any of several self-serve bicycle stations and return it to any other station within the service area.
In Conway, a person can get a bicycle at one location and drop it off at another. Charges are levied through an app downloaded to the user's smartphone. The city's bicycle-sharing program is operated by Zagstar, a startup company based in Cambridge, Mass.
Trips lasting less than an hour are free. For others, the rates -- paid with a credit card -- are $2 an hour, $15 a month or $30 a year. Students, and staff and faculty members of the University of Central Arkansas, Hendrix College and Central Baptist College, all in Conway, can join the program for $20 per year.
"I don't think this exact animal is out there in Arkansas anywhere else," said Tab Townsell, Metroplan's executive director and the former mayor of Conway. He helped develop the Conway bicycle-sharing program before he left office.
Landosky said the Little Rock and North Little Rock bicycle-sharing program is aimed at downtown residents and workers, not visitors or tourists, for which private bicycle rentals are available.
"Somebody who rents a bike for a day wants a bike that's comfortable to ride for long distances," he said. "It's not a bike-share bike. Somebody who checks out a bike-share bike is typically looking for that transportation option to get from Point A to Point B. It's a different clientele, those two groups of people."
A proposal by Bantam Strategy Group of Baton Rouge was selected from among five proposals for the program. Landosky said a contract still needs to be signed. The company would need to raise more than $500,000 in initial startup and operation money, or about $2,600 per bicycle.
The money would come from a mix of corporate sponsorship, grants, and federal or local money, according to the company. The company would set up the program, including identifying station sites. The bicycles would be provided through BCycle, a bicycle-sharing company.
Under the proposal, users could sign up for a yearly plan for about $60, which would give them an hour of riding per day, he said.
Bantam "will bring a great product to our community," Landosky said.
Townsell said the concept has the potential to reshape the landscape of both downtowns, make them more bicycle-friendly and create an environment in which people would prefer to bike a few blocks to a meeting rather than drive.
"There's some transformational ways bike-sharing can impact downtown," he said. "There's a great future for bike-share in downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock."
Little Rock tried a bicycle-sharing program almost 20 years ago. The City Bikes program began with 15 bicycles downtown with no restrictions on who could ride them or where they could be ridden. Even though the bulky bikes were painted orange so they would be hard to miss, seven quickly disappeared and an eighth was found crushed.
Bryan Day, then the city parks director, was behind the idea. He now is executive director of the Little Rock Port Authority.
"It was the right thing to do, but it was 20 years too early," he said Wednesday. "It didn't work. I wish it did."
Day said he believes Little Rock residents would be more receptive to the bicycle-sharing concept today, given the explosion of interest in cycling, exemplified by the popular Arkansas River Trail along both sides of the river in Little Rock and North Little Rock.
"Maybe now is the time," he said. "I hope it takes off."
Metro on 06/01/2017