With ridership continuing to climb, Fort Worth Bike Sharing is seeking to expand in areas of the city where its services were previously inaccessible. (Courtesy of Fort Worth Bike Sharing)
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ENVIRONMENTAL
As demand for bikes remains high, Fort Worth Bike Sharing prepares for future growth
by
Haley SamselFebruary 24, 2022
With the COVID-19 pandemic
entering its second year in 2021,
Fort Worth Bike Sharing expected to see a slow decline in the number of people using their recognizable red and white B-cycles, available for rent at 59 stations across the city.
Data
collected over the past year indicates the opposite. Ridership increased by 4% from 2020, and the service counted 84,073 rides last year compared to 56,348 in 2019, said Jennifer Grissom, the director of Fort Worth Bike Sharing.
“I didn’t anticipate it was going to have a permanent effect, but we also tried to capitalize on it as much as possible and keep that momentum going,” Grissom said. “When you’re riding a bike, you feel like a kid again. (The pandemic) kind of reminded people of those simple activities, and I think that’s something that is
going to stick around.”
Part of the increase can be attributed to the amount of bikes and stations now available to anyone who comes across the bike kiosks, most of which are clustered along the Trinity Trail system, the Cultural District, Near Southside and downtown Fort Worth.
Part of the increase can be attributed to the amount of bikes and stations now available to anyone who comes across the bike kiosks, most of which are clustered along the Trinity Trail system, the Cultural District, Near Southside and downtown Fort Worth.
How to use Fort Worth Bike Sharing
Visitors can rent electric or classic bikes from
59 stations across Fort Worth. Here’s how to get started.
Download the
BCycle app, which you can use to rent and pay for a bike. You can also pay by card at the station or
here.
Find a bike kiosk near you or the neighborhood you’re visiting.
This map shows all stations.
Decide which pass you want. Day passes are $8 for 24 hours of rides. Explorer passes get you a month of unlimited hour rides. Semester passes last for six months. Annual passes are $100.
Return the bike every hour to avoid
an extra charge of $4 per hour. Select “check out bike” and “keep riding” once you’ve placed the bike back into the kiosk.
Check to see if you qualify for a discount. Students, senior citizens, low-income residents and military members qualify for
special rates.
In 2013,
the program kicked off with 300 bikes at 30 stations.The system now performs maintenance on 420 bicycles, including 145 electric bikes and 275 classic models, that require day passes or long-term memberships to rent.
After formally becoming a department of Tarrant County’s Trinity Metro transit agency last spring, Fort Worth Bike Sharing integrated more than 25 stations into the system. The new locations include
kiosks near TCU, Hotel Dryce, Kellis Park and the Northside TexRail station.
Grissom expects to add another 12 kiosks in 2022, with a focus on areas of Fort Worth that have never had access to the bike sharing service. That’s only possible when there’s enough infrastructure, such as bike lanes and sidewalks, to ensure appropriate safety for cyclists, she said.
“Having a station on Jacksboro Highway would be great, but there’s no infrastructure, and I’m not going to purposely create an unsafe situation,” Grissom said. “We have looked toward expanding south, east and farther west, but again, there’s just really not the infrastructure there. Hopefully, the infrastructure will catch up and we’ll be able to do that.”
The bike sharing service will expand in north Fort Worth, which staff identified as an underserved area, Grissom said. Two new locations will open at the Northside Community Center and Marine Park in the coming months.
Other goals include revitalizing the
First Mile Program, which offers low-income residents an annual membership for $10 per year. Memberships declined in 2021, offering an “opportunity for improvement,” according to the program’s annual report.
Fort Worth Bike Sharing has accomplished its goal of creating clusters of stations to pick up and drop off the bikes, but that hasn’t come without growing pains, said Jon Wilcox, who has been a member since July 2014.
Wilcox has noticed significant wear-and-tear on the city’s bicycle inventory and thinks it’s time to start replacing the original fleet. He often spots people near kiosks who are confused by the mobile app and
the structure of day passes, which last for 24 hours but require cyclists to rent for hour-long increments.
“The reliability of the kiosks is also pretty shaky,” Wilcox said. “The most frequent complaint I hear is that stations are down, or they appear to be up but they’re actually down. Or they are up, but my card is not working because something in the computer thinks the bike didn’t get checked in all the way.”
Want to try a free ride?
Through its Free First Fri-YAY program with Blue Zones Project Fort Worth, cyclists can get a free day pass on the first Friday of every month. Use promo code 92020 at the bike kiosk or 92020APP on the Bcycle app to redeem.
Customer service representatives have been better at resolving problems since the bike share transitioned to Trinity Metro, Wilcox said. The program has been worth it for him since riding the bikes gives him a chance to exercise recreationally, save money and travel short distances from his West Seventh neighborhood.
“When you’re on your own bike and you have a flat tire, that’s a big problem,” Wilcox said. “Now, it’s not my problem. You ride on the flat for a couple of miles, you park it in the stand and you get another one. That’s pretty nice.”
Growing the number of longtime members like Wilcox is crucial to making Fort Worth Bike Sharing a sustainable enterprise, Grissom said.
She imagines that the number of new stations will slow to about five per year as the department pursues more grant funding to support “expensive” bike maintenance and make it easier for residents to ride a bike to work rather than commuting in their car.
“Fort Worth is growing, so we have to grow with it,” she said. “The more options we can provide for people, the more we can accomplish those other goals of having people really use our bikes for their transportation.”
I land on the bonnet, elbow goes thru the windscreen
