(Photos © J. Maus)
Alta Bicycle Share, sister company of Portland-based Alta Planning + Design, will operate the largest bike-sharing system in the United States when Washington D.C. expands their SmartBikeDC program into Arlington, Virginia later this year.
Plans announced today by D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and other regional officials say the system will launch with roughly 1100 bikes at 114 stations. D.C. was the first city in America to test the bike-sharing waters when they opened a few kiosks in April 2008.
Alta Bicycle Share will oversee the system, assisting in permitting, funding strategies, program management, kiosk design and location analysis, and more. The D.C./Arlington system (which doesn’t have a name yet, but has a survey to help choose one) will be based on the heralded BIXI system from Montreal.
This news comes just a few weeks after Denver launched a large-scale bike-share system and Minneapolis is also close to launching one. Portland was once very keen on bike-sharing, but — despite the hometown expertise of Alta and a lot of effort to find a suitable vendor — City Hall currently has no plans to move forward.