Smartbike program expected to grow by summer

WASHINGTON -- It began as a pilot program, but now D.C.'s Smartbike program is pedaling toward a huge expansion.

By summer, the D.C. Department of Transportation will have expanded the current Smartbike system from 10 racks to 50 racks.

"We are already seeing that the vast amount of usage is commuting," DDOT Director Gabe Klein tells WTOP. "This will be a pretty drastic expansion of the program, and this is what we set out to do when we launched it."

The expansion will bring the total number of bikes on the city's streets to around 500.

The goal is to get Smartbike running in all eight Wards of the District. The upcoming expansion will not touch all eight Wards, but there will be numerous neighborhoods that get the bikes, including Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, Capitol Hill, Anacostia and Georgetown.

"You want the bike stations to be relatively close together so that if a rack is full, you can ride to another one and drop it off," says DDOT spokesperson John Lisle. "We will fan out from the center of the city in concentric circles."

DDOT has set aside about $3 million in stimulus money to fund the upcoming expansion.

There are also some preliminary plans to expand Smartbike outside the city -- talks have begun with Arlington to take Smartbike across the Potomac River into Virginia.

D.C.'s Smartbike program now has over 1,000 registered members and more than 10,000 rentals have been paid for.

To become a member of Smartbike, users have to pay a $40 annual fee. Renters can take the bikes for three hours at a time and for an unlimited number of trips a day.

When the program rode into the District last summer, it was hailed as the first of its kind in North America.

The program has a good report card so far -- there have not been any accidents reported and only one bike has been stolen.

(Copyright 2009 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)