![photo6](https://bikeportland.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/photo6-1200x900.jpg)
(Photo: Armando Luna)
Two private bike share companies have set up tiny pilot programs to help Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) cope with a five-week closure of the Aerial Tram.
![IMG_4053](https://bikeportland.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/IMG_4053-1200x1027.jpg)
Jump Bikes started offering rides on 15 of their electric-assist bikes today and Lime is scheduled to turn on their bikes Wednesday. OHSU Transportation Options Coordinator John Landolfe told us today that the bikes are available free for 45 minutes and are only for people with an official OHSU email address (staff and students) and selected contractors, vendors, volunteers, and temporary employees*. Both companies expect to have 30 bikes available by the end of this week. (*Note: A reader says he was able to use one of the Lime bikes today without an OHSU account.)
In total there are now four different bike share options available to OHSU commuters during the tram closure. Biketown (open to anyone) has installed a temporary station with 18 bikes at the Schnitzer Lot (SW Moody and Sheridan) and Go By Bike Share (run by the same folks who do the bike valet) is another option for those with an OHSU email.
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Found my non-sweaty alternative for surviving tram closure 2018: @jumpbikes! I was practically giddy going up Marquam Hill. Thanks @go_by_bike @OHSUNews! pic.twitter.com/770VKeTtIh
— Jennifer Smith (@madeyerish) June 26, 2018
Keep in mind if you use the Jump or Lime bikes, they aren’t set up to be dockless. That means you can’t just lock them up anywhere and you must return them to one of the three Go By Bike valet locations: the Schnitzer Lot, the Whitaker Lot (SW Whitaker St, one block east of the Center for Health and Healing), or up on Marquam Hill at the OHSU Student Center.
PBOT spokesman Dylan Rivera Jump and Lime were able to offer the bikes without a city permit because the trips start and end on OHSU property. “It operates as any fleet of vehicles would,” he shared with us via email today. “Therefore does not require a permit from PBOT, as private for hire transportation would.”
Interesting side note: Portland’s Biketown system is operated by Motivate Inc., which was recently reported to be in acquisition talks with ride-sharing giant Lyft. The bikes used in the Biketown system were made by a company that has since re-branded as Jump, which is owned by Uber. And then there’s Lime, a company that’s drooling over the prospect of launching dockless e-bikes and scooters in Portland. Hopefully this tiny pilot gives PBOT some good insight into how our bike share offerings should evolve in the future.
Learn how to sign up and find out more at GoByTram.com/bikeshare.
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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Jonathan thanks for the interesting update. And what a wicked web of corporate ownership and partnerships in bike share now…who knew?!
And a cute map to boot. 🙂
“Keep in mind if you use the Jump or Lime bikes, they aren’t set up to be dockless. That means you can’t just lock them up anywhere and you must return them to one of the three Go By Bike valet locations: the Schnitzer Lot, the Whitaker Lot (SW Whitaker St, one block east of the Center for Health and Healing), or up on Marquam Hill at the OHSU Student Center.”
How are Jump and Lime ensuring their bikes are returned to one of the three valet locations? Is there a fee for parking outside of these locations? Since Jump and Lime don’t have a permit to operate in the public right-of-way, will they be fined if their bikes are parked in the public right-of-way?
Yes, there is a pretty hefty fee.
Hey, bring on the dockless bikes and scooters! They can’t get here soon enough, the streets are already littered with lyft and uber vehicles!
Dockless e-bikes, absolutely yes. Scooters, NO. I predict Portlanders will regret allowing scooters onto our streets.
Read this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/27/san-francisco-tech-industry-scooters-homelessness
And this: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/07/scooters-littering-city-streets-shout-at-people-unlock-me-or-ill-call-the-police
eScooters have wide popularity, especially with those who for various reasons don’t want to ride a bike. If you are waiting for everyone to adopt your own person method of transportation, then you will be waiting for a very very long time. Reducing motor vehicle VMT will require a variety of options to appeal to a large enough group of people to make an impact. Not every option works for every persons needs are we should be careful with protectionist attitudes that automatically exclude the needs and options of others. Every shared transportation mode has startup issues and in this case the issues have relatively easy solutions that can be delta with by partnership with the city.
People thought the game of, ” Lawn Darts” was a good idea too. Sometimes the universe has other plans.
Dart War might have been a bit dangerous in retrospect, but it was a hell of a lot of fun at the time.
The critical question for PBoT & CoP, will e-scooters be all that useful as a transport mode [and safe] once the rains arrive. I doubt it. I would hope that any future contract [if done] would clear the sidewalks of them in the off season and set minimum safety thresholds for a municipal franchise contract.
And it doesn’t rain in San Francisco? News to me!
your points are good, but difficult to read through. Suggest reread your opinion for run on sentences and misspelled words prior to posting.
What fear am I supposed to take away from those articles? One says that scooters are a symbol of gentrification. Ok, fine, but I’d rather we worry about the actual harms of gentrification than the symbols. And they sometimes get left on sidewalks? LOL. Sure, but it’s a whole lot easier to move one of those then the cars that often block sidewalks.
Sorry but the situation on the ground where scooters are deployed is nothing like what those click-bait opinion ‘news’ pieces are describing. This is the fastest consumer adoption we have seen of a physical product, maybe ever. There’s not enough scooters to satisfy demand in most markets yet.
My hot take is that E-scooters are good in theory, BUT they need a place to park! (that’s not on the sidewalk). If the City wants to allow them, the City needs to change some car-parking spaces into scooter piles.
Just set them gently in an on-street parking spot. Should be fine.
the same thing can be said about bikes. i lock up my bike to poles, fences, and other miscellaneous objects far more than i do to an actual bike rack.
So if OHSU bought a parking spot in Hillsdale, Multnomah Village, etc…
Aside from the e-bikes, OHSU has free bike share for employees. Also not dockless, but better than BikeTown because you can use them all day if you want and the bikes are normal weight. They make it reasonable to run errands in town if you don’t want to lock your normal rig in a public space.
Note that the free 45 minutes for the e-bikes is getting 45 minutes of credit. It’s not like they’re perpetually free (like the regular share bikes) and you get 45 minutes each time you use them.
People who don’t normally ride the hill might just give it a shot on their regular bike rather than assume they need an e-bike. Because of the logistics of picking up and dropping off the bike, even a relatively slow rider is likely to be faster door to door. It really doesn’t take that much time, and if you do the climb, you may well find that it’s a lot easier than you imagined.
One of the curious effects of the tram so far has been to make traffic easier than normal, at least for me. Yesterday, I was able to bomb down Sam Jackson at 5pm full bore all the way to the last curve before the light — something I normally can do only a few times a year as I almost always get stuck behind drivers who take the descent slowly. Traffic seemed unusually light going up as well.
Yep. Riding up Terwilliger is not hard. But riding up Campus Drive is harder. Therefore, one could just ride Terwilliger then hop off and lock up at Casey Eye.
This solution allows people to use elevators and walk through buildings which significantly shortens total distance and mitigates speed differentials between cycling and walking. It might even be faster for slower riders.
What most people think of as the main floor of the hospital is on the 9th floor. Taking the elevator eliminates the need to climb in one of the steeper areas.
I agree that it’s Campus Drive that breaks the deal for a casual cyclist. I’m a year-round bicycle commuter and just don’t like getting to work out-of-my-mind sweaty and winded (and am too lazy to build in shower time). As my tweet conveys, I am thrilled to use the e-bike option.
Disagree. Riding up Terwilliger daily is hard or impossible for the average person, but e-assist makes it possible.
Hmm. Depends on how quantifiably healthy the “average person” is (betcha someone at OHSU can say), and maybe how the “average person’s” bike is defined (gear ratios, weight, etc.).
my “interested but concerned” partner rides ~4 times a week year round. i cajoled her into climbing terwilliger once and she told me that she will never do this again.
Terwillager past OHSU and on to Capital is, by far the easiest climb I’ve found to get from N. Portland to the west side. I’d use it a lot more often if it weren’t also the longest route.
Stph
Or if people volunteered to let them be parked on their lawn or driveway? 😉 or business allowed them to be parked in their parking lots?
I mostly joke.
Downtown would be an issue though. Although lots of private surface lots.
Be careful if you’re an OHSU employee using a Lime bike. When you install the app, it doesn’t ask for your email address, just your phone number. You need to take the additional step of verifying your OHSU email before they will give you your free 45 minutes per ride. I found this after borrowing the bike to get up Marquam Hill and seeing the charge on my credit card. Lime says they will not refund any charges, even retroactively.
*low powered moped.
Interestingly enough, it seems like this isn’t necessarily true. Looking at the Lime app right now I see several parked bikes along SW 3rd up by Sheridan, a few more down at the end of SW Bond by the Old Spaghetti factory, etc.
Seems like bikeshare is operating on public property after all, lol.