Urbana Bike Share Consideration

[UPDATE: The N-G had a followup of the board's discussion here. A quick excerpt:

In response, council member Eric Jakobsson said what happens would depend on the city's culture.

"My guess is ... that the system will be respected and used properly," he said. "If you have good reason to hope ... it's really better to make decisions based on that hope, rather than on the fear that something might go wrong."

Urbana City Planner Kevin Garcia said bike theft isn't typically a problem for dockless-bike-sharing companies because the branded bikes don't have much resale value, are hard to break down into usable scrap components and have tracking devices in them. He said employees of those companies will retrieve an abandoned bike in at most three hours on a regular day and 12 hours on off days.

Some city council members said there should be certain circumstances where a bike is retrieved as soon as possible, such as if it's in the middle of the road. They also suggested lowering the recommended number of bikes each company could bring, which was initially set at 500. Garcia said at least seven companies have expressed interest in the CU area.]

In a Committee of the Whole meeting the Urbana City Council will be considering the dockless bike sharing project for the area (agenda and relevant report here). From the News-Gazette today:

Urbana to join bike share? Possible regulations under review

Tonight, the city council will consider a proposal to roll dockless bike sharing into Urbana.

Dockless bike sharing allows cyclists to rent rides with a phone app that locates bikes via GPS. Payment is processed by the app to unlock the bike, which has a locking mechanism on the back wheel, and a rider can place the bike anywhere around town when finished.

Urbana's look at dockless bike sharing comes after the Champaign city council approved a similar proposal at the end of last year. Urbana City Planner Kevin Garcia said the plan going forward is to create a uniform set of regulations if both cities and the University of Illinois approve the activity.

For Urbana and Champaign, Garcia said both city staffs are aiming to have dockless bike sharing and its regulation system all approved by May...

These are some of the proposed dockless bike-share regulations, according to a city staff report that the council will review tonight:

— Creating one dockless bike sharing license for Champaign, Urbana and the UI, which would be administered by the city of Champaign as the lead agency.

— A non-refundable, annual license fee of $600 that Champaign would receive the largest share of.

— A $1,000 security deposit that dockless bike-share operators pay to both Champaign and Urbana ($2,000 total).

— Each operator could have a fleet of 500 bicycles.

Full article here.