John GreenfieldPedaling Divvy bikes on the lakefront.
To hear the Chicago Tribune tell it, people who used the city’s new Divvy bike-share system on its first day of operations last Friday experienced nothing but headaches. But on Sunday, I rode a Divvy to all 68 of the new docking stations, and witnessed only a few problems, most of them minor. I also spoke to plenty of satisfied customers, and walked away from my 12-hour, 40-mile odyssey mostly unscathed.
The system, funded with $22 million in federal and local grants, is owned by the city of Chicago and operated by Alta Bike Share, Inc., which also runs New York’s recently launched Citi Bike program, as well as systems in Washington, D.C., and Boston. Denver also has the B-cycle public bicycle program, and other major cities slated to get bikeshares in the near future include San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, and Phoenix.
Divvy is part of several large-scale sustainable transportation initiatives in the works under Mayor Rahm Emanuel. These include a complete overhaul of the south branch of Chicago Transit Authority’s Red Line, bus rapid transit p... Read more
