Share and Share Alike – Local Bikeshare Sponsored by Indianapolis Pacers

If you grew up in a family, you’ve probably been schooled on sharing. Moms everywhere repeat for the thousandth time, “You must share with your brother!” Early on we do it to avoid the “glare” that can only mean trouble. As adults, it’s our choice to share or not, but it’s a choice a lot of urban dwellers are making willingly.

Indianapolis’ new Pacers Bikeshare Program is a result of those choices. The urban lifestyle, typically busy and sometimes transient, calls for alternative options to meeting basic needs. Fewer residents want to be responsible for ownership of homes, cars or even bikes. If you can walk to the corner and pick up a bike for the hour or afternoon, why sacrifice valuable real estate in your downtown apartment for storage? Sometimes, less really is more. In this case, the less you have, the less you have to worry about and the more space you have for other stuff.

The close proximity of living urban makes sharing things like green space and transportation easy. In fact, density is the main ingredient to a successful bikeshare program. “People must be able to access the bikes easily and readily,” says Kären Haley, Executive Director of Indianapolis Cultural Trail, Inc., “and our downtown is the perfect set up for this type of project. We placed 25 stations with 250 bikes primarily along the trail because it offers a high density of traffic with several points of interest and key destinations for residents and visitors alike.”

Prior to implementing Indianapolis’ bikeshare, representatives from the Indianapolis Cultural Trail were involved with the national bikeshare working group and traveled to Denver to check out the mile-high city’s successful bikeshare, which has been operating for five years now. Haley explains, “Denver is about twice the size of Indianapolis and is using the same equipment, so we based our targets and goals at half of what they have experienced. Based on those numbers, we’ve already come close to membership goals in the one month we’ve been operable. We’re way ahead of what we expected for the year.”

The increase in Indianapolis’ downtown residential development ensures the success of a shared bike system. Local residents can purchase a yearly membership online and simply unlock a bike when needed with a swipe of an annual member card. The access cards were sponsored by the Mozzo, an apartment project of Milhaus. From a development perspective supporting the bikeshare is an easy decision. As a resource, it is an attractive feature for prospective renters. Founder and CEO at Milhaus, Tadd Miller says, “The bike share is a big win for our city and for the development community. The Cultural Trail has generated significant increases in property values. It has impacted development patterns by providing non-vehicle travel between key areas of the city. Adding a bikeshare component just makes our growing neighborhoods even more accessible.”

Download the B-cycle app free from the app store to locate available bikes and bike stations.