Explore Bike Share arrives in Memphis
In the heart of one of the city’s poorest ZIP codes, the future of Memphis bike-sharing is ready to roll. Next door to Christ Quest Community Church, across the street from a community garden, an Explore Bike Share docking station sits waiting for the first bikes to arrive, and Knowledge Quest program director Yolanda Manning can’t wait.
“We find a lot of time that our residents don’t have access to transportation,” Manning said. “These bicycles coming into the community will help alleviate that.”
Manning’s faith-based nonprofit signed up for an Explore Bike Share group membership to give as many as 40 employees and 100-200 neighborhood residents an affordable way to use Memphis’ new bike-sharing system.
After three years of planning, $3 million in fundraising and build-out, Explore Bike Share will deliver 600 bikes to 60 stations May 23 and launch a rental bike system linking West Memphis, Downtown, Midtown, South Memphis and Orange Mound.
Who’s going to use it?
Organizers of Explore believe they’ve covered all the angles, from theft-proofing the system to ensuring access for low-income residents to maintaining firm
“We find a lot of time that our residents don’t have access to transportation. These bicycles coming into the community will help alleviate that.”
control over the bikes, but they’re quick to admit they’re not exactly sure how the bikes will be used and by whom.
“This time next year ask me that question,” said Trey Moore, executive director.
They’re quick to say bike-sharing is for everyone, though they acknowledge it’s widely perceived as a tourist amenity and that the predominant demographic in the young industry has been higher-income white men and 20- to 30-somethings.
Basic retail fare will be $5 for an hour ride. Rides and memberships can be purchased with a mobile app or at 20 self-service kiosks paired with selected stations. The system will have a cash payment option for people who don’t have credit or debit cards.
Bicycles can only be rented at stations and must be returned to a station that has an open dock. The system features the BCycle Dash, made by a subsidiary of Trek Bicycles, with each bicycle containing a GPS device and a touchscreen computer. It’s the vendor’s 50th system roll-out.
Retail fares are expected to pay about half the system’s operating costs. The other half will come from memberships, available for up to a year; fundraising; and partnerships with companies and organizations like Knowledge Quest.
“We like to say that accessible and affordable may not be $5 for a single ride,” said Sara Studdard, community engagement and marketing director. “It may be $5 for an annual membership, and we will work directly with organizations to really identify what membership price points actually meet the needs of residents throughout the entire service area.”
Community partnerships
Knowledge Quest has been working since 1998 in a poor neighborhood around Walker and Lauderdale, ministering to social and spiritual needs of 100-200 residents and their children. It operates the Green Leaf Learning Farm organic garden and offers after-school programs and parenting and culinary classes.
With the advent of bike-sharing, it will add weekly bike-rider training through a partnership between Explore Bike Share and Revolutions Bicycle Coop. Classes to teach people to ride and training on safe riding on streets will be offered throughout the system’s coverage area.
Manning envisions Knowledge Quest workers and families and members of Christ Quest Community Church using bikes for fitness, recreation, transportation and community-building through group rides.
“Explore Bike Share really comes in as a physical activity component and to support our community in reaching their physical fitness goals,” Manning said. “They will also connect the community with a different way of transportation.”
When organizers asked the public to help determine where the stations should be located, Knowledge Quest was one of the most heavily requested sites.
Memphis comes to bike-sharing relatively late, a decade or so after it became widespread, thanks to digital technology advances, and toward the end of a four-year growth spurt.
The National Association of City Transportation Officials reported May 1 that Americans took 35 million bikeshare trips in 2017, up 25 percent from a year earlier, and that the number of bike-share bikes more than doubled, to about 100,000.
‘One of the most equitable bike-sharing systems in the country’
Because Memphis took its time, organizers hope the city will elude some of the growing pains seen elsewhere, such as lack of social equity and a chaotic approach to renting and returning bicycles.
“I’m telling everybody we’re about to launch one of the most state-of-the-art and one of the most equitable bikesharing systems in the country,” said Nicholas Oyler, bikeway and pedestrian program manager for the city of Memphis.
“If you look at a lot of the cities where they launched bike share, they offer some bad examples of how to engage the community and ensure that bikesharing is equitable,” Oyler said. “Many other bike-share systems still to this day don’t have a cash payment system. For people who don’t have a debit or credit card, it’s an amenity they can’t use.”
Compared to other cities, Memphis’s distribution of bike share stations reflects a deliberate approach to serving people across the socioeconomic spectrum, Oyler said.
“A lot of (other cities’ systems) went to the neighborhoods that were quote, unquote ‘ready,’” Oyler said. “Generally those were the affluent neighborhoods, not necessarily the neighborhoods that could use this as a true transportation option.
“With Explore Bike Share focusing on South Memphis and Orange Mound in the first year of implementation, I think it speaks volumes about how much thought they’ve given to this,” Oyler said.
The system includes docking stations in tourist hotspots Downtown and up-and-coming areas such as CooperYoung, Crosstown and Midtown. But it also has good representation in economically distressed neighborhoods, with seven stations in South Memphis and three in Orange Mound.
Explore is working with retail outlets in the service area to set up cash payment options for monthly and annual memberships. At launch, cash customers can call a customer service number, 901-295-0707.
Samantha Herr, executive director of the North American Bikeshare Association, said social equity is important because, “Bike sharing is transportation, and transportation needs to be accessible for everyone. It’s a powerful way to get around. It’s a more accessible form
Station-based vs. dockless systems
Herr said the city’s type of system, known as stationed-based, is challenging because of “the heavy capital cost up front, raising that funding, that’s one of the big hurdles.”
“I’m very excited for Explore Bike Share. I know it’s been in process for several years, but they’ve done it,” Herr said. “It’s here.”
Memphis opted for a system with fixed stations where bikes must be docked, as opposed to a dockless system in which bikes are virtually docked. Dockless bike-sharing offers more flexibility and could be an option for expanding the Memphis system into less populous areas.
Some cities that have gone the dockless route have regretted it because of bicycles being neglected, abused or randomly abandoned. Dallas, for example, got hundreds of complaints after a dockless system launched last fall.
Explore organizers believe the ability to keep an eye on every bicycle in the system, through GPS, will be a powerful deterrent to theft and misuse, as well as providing a trove of data about how and where bikes are being used.
“We’ll have eyes and ears on our inventory pretty much at all times,” Moore said.
Moore said the next wave, a 300bike, 30-station expansion planned for 2019, will be balanced between extending further from Downtown and adding more equipment in the areas already served. Explore has a $2.2 million federal grant for expansion.
The University of Memphis, Rhodes College, Christian Brothers University, Binghamton and Uptown are likely expansion targets.
Clark Butcher, owner of Victory Bicycle Studio on Broad, said the city’s bicycling culture should benefit from the bike-share program, but he’s not sure how it will play out.
“It is going to be interesting to see how it’s received. Are we providing something new for ALL Memphians? For tourists? Or is this to cater to a very slim group of Memphians?” Butcher said via email. “Not sure, but I know this: At the end of the day, we will have more people riding bikes than before, we’ll have more people talking about bikes than before, and all of that is just more exposure.”
Reach reporter Wayne Risher at (901) 529-2874 or wayne.risher@commercialappeal.com.