PEDALING NEW BIKE PACT
Blue Cross expansion concerns trucker group
A deal to dump 1,200 new rental bikes on the streets of Boston under a new pact with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts has a state truckers’ group fearing trouble is ahead.
“I’m really concerned for the safety of bicyclists and the liability for trucking companies,” said Richard Deslongchamps, chairman of the Massachusetts Trucking Association board of directors.
“Trucks have blind spots,” he said, adding it’s “real bad” for truckers in New York City, and adding more bikes here could be just as taxing.
Blue Cross Blue Shield announced yesterday it will pay nearly $20 million to turn the Boston area’s Hubway bikeshare system into Blue Bikes and expand the program with more than 1,000 new bikes and more than 100 new rental stations across the region.
“Blue Cross is committed to helping Massachusetts residents lead healthy lives, and this program is a way to bring that to life,” said Jeff Bellows, vice president of corporate citizenship for BCBS. “Being a health care company, it’s in line with what we want to do.”
The company will pay for the program over six years to be the sole sponsor of the bike-share system, which will be renamed Blue Bikes. The money will be used in part to fund a 67 percent increase in bikes — by the end of 2019, there will be 3,000 Blue Bikes on the streets, up from 1,800 today — and add more than 100 new stations across Boston, Cambridge, Brookline and Somerville. The expansion will bring more service to underserved parts of the city, Bellows said.
“Communities like Mattapan, Dorchester, Roxbury, they’re going to get additional access to these bikes,” he said.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh backed the deal, saying bikesharing has become critical to Boston transportation.
“The Hubway bike-share program began in the City of Boston in 2011 and quickly became integral to our transportation system,” Walsh said. “I am delighted to welcome Blue Cross Blue Shield as a partner as we further develop our bike-share program, and I’d like to thank them for helping us to make this resource available to additional Boston residents in their own neighborhoods.”
After the city debuted the Hubway bike-share program in 2011, biking became more popular citywide and the rate of cycling injuries dropped, a 2016 study in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health found.
The new Blue Bikes system will include an entirely new set of bikes, an improved mobile app and some new features, including a valet option at major transportation hubs. The valet service, for example, could mean a commuter to South Station would be able to drop a bike off at the valet station rather than trying to find a bike-share dock with open spaces.
The BCBS sponsorship will replace a sponsorship strategy that allowed a variety of companies to pay to temporarily put their logos on the side of bikes. By switching to a single sponsor, Blue Bikes will follow in the footsteps of New York City’s Citi Bike and the San Francisco Bay Area’s Ford GoBike.
‘I’m concerned for the safety of bicyclists and the liability for truckers.’ — RICHARD DESLONGCHAMPS chairman of the Mass. Trucking Association