Capital Bikeshare comes to the Mall, already
The National Park Service may take ten years to make some decisions, but on bike sharing, they’ve been lightning fast. Jacques Arsenault noticed that a Capital Bikeshare station is already up on the Mall, on Ohio Drive:
Image by Jacques Arsenault on Twitter.
Just two weeks ago, NCPC approved NPS plans for 5 stations on the Mall, at Smithsonian Metro and near the Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and FDR/MLK memorials.
They said the goal was to get one station installed before the cherry blossom festival. Not only did the cherry blossoms come quickly this year thanks to the good weather, but so did the station.
As it turns out, NPS and Capital Bikeshare exceeded that promise: a 2nd station, at the Washington Monument, is also active today.
Twitter user whiteknuckled surmised, “I predict the new Mall bikeshare station will either have zero docks or zero bikes at almost all times for the next few weeks.”
It will be very interesting to watch the CaBi dashboard and, once it’s available, the trip data to see how this station affects usage. At the NCPC meeting, Harriet Tregoning predicted it will spark a large surge in daily memberships, which are fiscally very healthy for Capital Bikeshare.
In other exciting bicycle infrastructure news, WABA reports that DDOT is installing bike lanes on Columbia Road today.
Image from WABA.