City Hall to enter the curbside bike rental business, taking over Bike Share ICT
The next time you rent a bike to cruise through Wichita, you’ll probably be renting it from city government.
City Hall has agreed to a friendly takeover of Bike Share ICT, shifting the curbside bike rental program from the nonprofit management that started it to more of a partnership between government and the private sector.
The program had been run by Becky Tuttle at the Greater Wichita YMCA. But Tuttle resigned from the Y in January when she was appointed to the City Council.
Now, Bike Share ICT is following her to city government.
“We realized through what’s going on in the community that right now we’re really rethinking how we approach multi-modal forms of transportation,” Tuttle said. “So we’re working with transit, we’re thinking about walkability, we’re thinking about bikeability, we’re thinking about scooters and all these different aspects of transportation.
“So it was just a really timely and unique opportunity to move Bike Share ICT under the city of Wichita Transit Department, with people who are really experts in this type of work.”
After two years in operation, Bike Share ICT is on a roll, said Karl Alexander, the area manager for Zagster Inc., the company that leases the rental bikes to the program.
To use the bikes, riders have to sign up online and about 250 new users are registering per week, Alexander said.
In the past month, the first bike-friendly weather this year, the system has averaged about 680 trips a week.
That’s a 64% increase in use compared with the same period last year, Alexander said.
In Wichita, “we’ve done incredibly well,” he said. “We’ve seen some of our highest usage in the country on a per capita basis.”
Bike Share ICT pays Zagster $1,800 a year per bike in lease fees. With 220 bikes on the street, that amounts to nearly $400,000 a year for a program that generates about $50,000 a year in rental income.
The bike leases are costly because the bikes are equipped with electronics that Zagster uses to collect rental charges and prevent theft.
The lion’s share of the cost is borne by a $360,000 grant from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurance company.
“The system is unsustainable without the Blue Cross and Blue Shield sponsorship,” a city staff report said.
On the consumer side, you can rent a bike for $1.50 per half hour.
Or, you could buy an annual membership for $30 that includes as many one-hour trips as you want to take. Anything past the first hour of a ride is billed at $2 an hour.
Students, faculty and staff of the local colleges and universities get the annual membership for $20 when they register using their school e-mail.
The city will take over the management of Bike Share ICT when the YMCA contract expires in early May. said Scott Wadle, senior management analyst with Wichita Transit.
City Hall will receive the funding from the Blue Cross sponsorship and the income from renting bikes and take on the responsibility for making the bike-lease payments to Zagster, Wadle said.
No city tax funds will go to the operation of the bike rental system, Tuttle said.
One of reasons Tuttle was appointed to the council was her work to establish Bike Share ICT. And she said she hopes the city can now grow it into a significant source of transportation.
“One thing that’s very near and dear to my heart is quality of place issues in our community, and that includes multi-modal forms of transportation, not only for recreation, but truly for transportation,” Tuttle said. “Not everybody has access to a vehicle; not everybody wants to drive everywhere, so the more we provide transportation options, it helps us to attract and retain talent in Wichita.
This story was originally published April 27, 2019 at 10:56 PM.
