(Photo by J. Maus/BikePortland)
Biketown is back.
After over 20 percent of the system was taken offline two weeks ago due to vandalism, Biketown says all 1,000 bikes are back in operation.
The City of Portland and bike share operator Motivate were caught off-guard by the scope of the vandalism. Sources told us they didn’t have enough parts on-hand — or enough labor to repair them. Thankfully, our community stepped up to help. Local bike business owners and employees lended a helping hand by rebuilding wheels and doing whatever it took to nurse the bikes back to full health.
In an email sent to members today, Biketown said, “We would like to extend a huge thank you to you, Portland. The support you’ve shown for bike share in this city is overwhelming. The team at Biketown is very grateful to know that the work we do is appreciated by so many of you. Now, let’s ride!”
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And the timing is perfect, because May is National Bike Month and that means thousands of Portlanders — many of them new to biking — will participate in the Bike More Challenge. Organized each year by The Street Trust, the Challenge is a friendly competition that pits individuals, teams, and workplaces throughout the region agains each other to see who can complete the most bike trips. This will be the first year Biketown is available during the contest.
In other Bike More Challenge news, the locally developed smartphone app Ride Report is now the official way to log trips. Once downloaded, you’re able to join the Challenge right inside the app and all your trips will be logged automatically — there’s no need to press start or stop. Not only is this an easy way to log your trips, because Ride Report shares ride data with the City of Portland, it will increase their knowledge about who’s riding where and how they feel about the trip (Ride Report users share trip quality).
As for the people responsible for the Biketown vandalism, we don’t have any new information to report. Sources say Portland Police had a lead on a suspect car; but we haven’t gotten a confirmation about that yet.
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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