Note: This story has been corrected since it was originally posted. Thank you to sharp-eyed readers.
Bay Area Bike Share released a map of proposed sites for bike-share stations in the East Bay today. Proposed sites for expansion into San Francisco and San Jose have already been released, but these are the first ones for Berkeley, Oakland, and Emeryville. The total number of bikes planned in the three cities is 1,300, with 800 of them in Oakland and 100 in Emeryville, to be rolled out by the end of 2017.
Phase 1, about 25 percent of the final East Bay expansion, will include 350 bikes at 34 stations.
A map of the initial proposed East Bay hubs, available here, shows them mostly sited along a spine between downtown Berkeley and downtown Oakland. Five stations surround the UC Berkeley campus' south and west sides, with another located across from Berkeley High School and the downtown Y, and a seventh a little further south on Telegraph at Blake street.
From there, the corridor of proposed sites generally follows Telegraph Avenue, incorporating BART stations and outlying hubs along 40th Street into Emeryville and on the western side of Lake Merritt.
Amtrak stations are left out of the first phase, though, and so are the West Oakland and Rockridge BART stations.
It looks like a good start, if your destinations are all near Telegraph or in downtown Oakland. With luck, further expansions to connect these hubs to other destinations will come sooner than later.
Having bike-share available close to the new Telegraph Avenue parking-protected bike lanes will be a game-changer for that area and we hope it will create some urgency to finish the new facilities further towards Temescal.
What do you think? Are these in the right places? Bike-share needs a somewhat dense network of hubs to be useful, but it's also necessary to put the hubs in places near where people want to go. Is this a good start?
Bay Area Bike Share is still accepting suggestions for station locations here. Comments can be made here, or at local public libraries, which will be presenting information about the expansion at the following times:
From April 26 through May 9, during regular open hours:
- Berkeley Library
- Central Branch, 2090 Kittredge St
- Claremont Branch, 2940 Benvenue Ave
- Emeryville
- Town Hall, 1333 Park Ave (through May 11)
- Oakland Library
- Main Branch, 125 14th St
- Asian Branch, 388 9th St
Also on May 3 from 4 to 6 pm, at the Temescal Branch Library, 5205 Telegraph in Oakland.
