Owner Pittsburgh Bike Share Transit type Bicycle sharing system Website healthyridepgh.com | Locale Pittsburgh, PA Number of stations 50 Began operation May 31, 2015 | |
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Healthy Ride is a public bicycle sharing system that serves parts of Pittsburgh. Operations started on May 31, 2015, with 50 stations and 500 bikes.
Contents
The system is owned and operated by Pittsburgh Bike Share, a Pittsburgh-based 501c3, with bikes provided by Nextbike.
History
Pittsburgh Bike Share was founded in December 2012 and incubated by Bike Pittsburgh. The organization was created due to mounting interest in implementing a municipal bike share system in Pittsburgh from a collection of local leaders: planners at the City of Pittsburgh, business leaders at Walnut Capital, and bicycle/pedestrian advocates at Bike Pittsburgh.
In 2013 Bike Pittsburgh raised significant capital from local foundations–including Heinz Endowments, Buhl Foundation, Henry L. Hillman Foundation, Richard King Mellon Foundation, and other anonymous donors–to cover planning and capital costs and match a $1.6 million Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality improvement (CMAQ) grant from the Federal Highway Administration. This successful fundraising campaign launched the bike share project. Bike Pittsburgh, working alongside leaders at the Department of City Planning, hired Alta Planning + Design to develop a business plan for the program. Alta Planning + Design, in partnership with the City of Pittsburgh Department of City Planning, conducted a thorough community outreach and planning operation and completed the business plan in 2013.
In 2014, the City advertised a bid for bike share procurement and system installation. The bid was awarded to S.E.T., an Ohio-based general contractor, partnering with Nextbike, a German company with over 20,000 bicycles deployed in bike-share systems worldwide, to provide the system equipment, including GPS enabled bicycles, solar powered kiosks and docking stations, and software to operate the system. As mandated by Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the CMAQ grant requirement, the City of Pittsburgh contracted with a federally certified project management team, CDR Maguire, to manage the implementation.
Pricing
Healthy Ride offers three plans: