GREENbike, Salt Lake City’s non-profit bike share program, eclipsed 100,000 rides for the season this past weekend.
The system, now comprising of roughly 200 bikes and 25 stations in the downtown core, launched in 2013. Of the 70 automated bike-sharing systems in the U.S, no other system that directly charges users for service has reached as many rides so quickly, and with as few bikes.
To put these numbers and milestone in perspective, over the past seven months, on average, each bike has been used over 500 times. When GREENbike added five new stations, plus additional bikes and expansion of existing stations this May, ridership increased by almost 300%, winning them an award at a national bike share conference in September.
“Our 2015 goal was to increase ridership and hit 66,000 rides by the end of December,” said GREENbike director Ben Bolte. “By the end of the first week in November, we already exceeded that goal by 52% with our 100,000th ride. This explosive growth clearly illustrates what we’ve said all along: more stations equals greater convenience and greater convenience equals a lot more riders. If we were to substantially expand the system, the possibilities are near limitless.”
To date, more than 50,000 daily and annual users have removed more than 1,300,000 vehicle miles from local roads, helping community air quality, decreasing traffic congestion, reducing road maintenance costs and burning nearly 19,000,000 calories in the process.
