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Calgary Bike Lanes and Bike Paths

Dockless Bike Share may be coming to Calgary in September 2018 - there's a notice of motion on Monday's council meeting to have the policy in place for sometime in Sept. 2018 for how a dockless bike share would be regulated by the City. (Item 12.1.1)

EDIT: Evan Woolley has posted more about it: http://www.calgary.ca/citycouncil/w...t-a-little-bit-more-green-with-Lime-Bike.aspx

Sounds like we're getting LimeBike
 
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Nice! Also, I believe this will be the first location in Canada.

Dockless Bike Share may be coming to Calgary in September 2018 - there's a notice of motion on Monday's council meeting to have the policy in place for sometime in Sept. 2018 for how a dockless bike share would be regulated by the City. (Item 12.1.1)

EDIT: Evan Woolley has posted more about it: http://www.calgary.ca/citycouncil/w...t-a-little-bit-more-green-with-Lime-Bike.aspx

Sounds like we're getting LimeBike
 
First for LimeBike at least (if they're chosen). U-Bicycle rolled out into Victoria last year and has started expanding in the Vancouver area. Dropbike has been in Kelowna for a few months now as well as several university campuses around the country since last year.
 
I used Limebike when I was down in the states. As a tourist, it was great, not sure how many locals would use it though.
 
Bike sharing will be a nice adoption to the city and doesn’t have to be only for tourists. Think of it like card to go but only for bikes, plenty of locals will be using the service.

How do you guys feel about dockeless versus docked bike sharing?
 
Bike sharing will be a nice adoption to the city and doesn’t have to be only for tourists. Think of it like card to go but only for bikes, plenty of locals will be using the service.

How do you guys feel about dockeless versus docked bike sharing?

I prefer docked as it seems to be more manageable and predictable. I spent a few years in Montreal with it's Bixi system and it was brilliant in most ways for tourists and locals alike. The challenge is you really need a concentration of stations on almost every block (Montreal has ~600 racks, ~10,000 bikes). Montreal's battles for road space are far more epic than Calgary's (due to narrower roads, 4x the people and legendary traffic congestion), but our political climate makes on-street stalls a bit of stretch for suburban councillors currently (see cycle-track implementation), whereas auto-centric Montreal political will has largely resigned to defeat in the centre/inner city as it is increasingly active focused in all ways.

Dockless is a good first step for us given our state of evolution. My only concern is from the perspective that it is fully the private sector running it. Sure it's free for taxpayers, but it means it is also unregulated and can be pulled / service adjusted rapidly (arguable a good thing in some cases, so it's not all bad). But it is difficult to build a reliable local culture of bike share if it doesn't stick around long enough or changes all the time, has barriers to some user communities, and is not integrated to the transportation network. Bixi, for example, is linked directly to the STM (Montreal's transit agency) where they offer steep discounts together, co-locate bike stations at metro plazas, transit tap cards can unlock bicycles etc.

With all that said, none of these things require docked/dockless or private/public exclusively. I just don't think we are there yet in maturity to pull off tighter integration as a municipality (e.g. private bike share + public transit) in a similar fashion if the bike share isn't a publicly managed. One day though! (I hope)
 
Hey Calgary, I had the pleasure of visiting last weekend (great to finally meet my counterpart here - @Surrealplaces!). I rented a bike and basically just tooled around the city for a while - and sampled many beers from some of your finest microbreweries. Nice little town you got there, was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get around by bike.

Here's a video I did of a Full Moon Ride I took along with some of your bikey folk.


(Still getting used to my FauxPro camera and editing videos so go easy on me)
 
That's a great video Dave! And it was great to meet you last week, and wished the stroll could have been longer. We'll have to do it again. Maybe up in the Chuck next time.
 
@Always_Biking For sure, will do! And likewise, feel free to reach out if you're ever up in E-Town with some free time and bike.

I've actually been to Calgary many times (usually there at least twice a year), but this was the first time I've really had a chance to just do some casual exploring, particularly by bike. I was thinking of coming down and then riding to Banff. Never done a longer trek like that before, seems like a good candidate.

Anyway, here's a time-lapse I shot riding from EV to Bowness Park:

 

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