Visit to Capital Bikeshare in Washington DC!

On Monday June 13th, myself along with a journalist friend M A Siraj paid a visit to one of the 'Capital Bikeshare's station in Washington DC located at Dupont Circle.

http://www.capitalbikeshare.com/

The bike station is located right in front of the DuPont circle Metro Station on Massachusetts's Ave and 20th Street. On arrival met with Mr. Eric Gilliland, GM (Operations) of Capital Bikeshare. This is what he has to say about the program.

The 'Capital Bikeshare' program is owned and run by Washington DC and Arlington city government. It is operated by 'Alta Bicycleshare'. Started in 2010 September, it has about 115 stations with 1000 bikes. Each station carries anywhere between 11 to 29 bicycles or docks. DuPont had total of 21 docks.

PHOTOGRAPHS - http://www.flickr.com/photos/22896183@N05/sets/72157626840840459/

As of today, daily about 4000 - 5000 rentals are done. Each station carries the bicycle docking stands and Kiosk for transactions. The Kiosks are powered through Solar Panels. The capital Bikeshare employes about 22 people including Bicycle repair technicians, Administration, Balancers and Cycle inspectors.

Balancer's job is to ensure each station with enough bicycles and carry the bicycles which couldn't be docked at the station. This ensures that ecah station has bicycles for users to rent out. The balancers carry the bikes in the truck/Van.

Washington DC City is responsible for the creating and maintaining civic infrastructure. According to Eric, since the start in 2010 Sep, only very handful has any crashes/accidents. None could be classified as fatal. There were only 6 thefts so far. Looking at the Washington DC demography, this is a encouraging news.

In about 50-60 minutes we spent there, we saw about 10-12 bike rentals - People either dropping the bikes and checking them out.

Did talked to couple of the bike renter's and both had only positive things to say about bikeshare.