Bike New Haven website
One of the new bikes that will be available for short-term rental starting next week via New Haven’s bike share program.
Thomas Breen Photo
City deputy transit chief Michael Pinto at Tuesday night’s meeting.
Starting next week, city residents and visitors will be able to rent a bike with the swipe of a phone and pedal around New Haven to get to work, complete a chore or just enjoy the city outside the confines of an automobile.
Or at least in parts of New Haven, at first, through Bike New Haven, the city’s long-awaited new bike share program.
At Tuesday’s night regular meeting of the Hill North Community Management Team at Career High School on Legion Avenue, deputy city transit chief Michael Pinto told neighbors that the program will have a soft launch next Tuesday.
The program will allow subscribers to make short-term rentals of bicycles located at stations throughout the city.
Pinto said that 100 bikes at 10 different locations will be available for rentals of up to 45 minutes at a time starting Tuesday.
He said that by April the program will have 300 bikes active and available at 30 stations located throughout the city, and that, a year from now, that number will likely increase to 400 bikes at 40 different stations.
In May 2017, alders voted to contract with New Haven Smart Mobility LLC to operate the bike share program. Smart Mobility currently operates bike share programs in other small city markets like Hoboken, N.J., West Palm Beach, Fla., and New Rochelle, N.Y.
Over the past few months, the city and Smart Mobility have been presenting site plans for tranches of bike share stations before the City Plan Commission for approval. The first 9 stations were approved in November, and the second 10 in January. Pinto said that the site plan for the last 11 stations in this initial phase of the program will be presented at the next City Plan Commission meeting.
He said that 12 of the stations have already been built.
The 10 bike stations that will be included in Tuesday’s soft launch will be located at:
• College Street and South Frontage Road in front of Alexion.
• Grove and Church streets.
• Audubon and Orange streets.
• York and Chapel streets in front of the Yale Repertory Theater.
• Howe and Chapel streets.
• 160 Temple St. (in Temple Plaza).
• 130 Bassett St. (at Lincoln-Bassett School).
• 528 Orange St. (near Café Romeo and Pearl Street).
• 200 Dixwell Ave. (near the Stetson library).
• 460 Sherman Parkway (at Hillhouse High School).
The following 9 bike share stations have also already been approved by the City Plan Commission. Click here for a complete map of the 30 planned stations.
• Elm Street and Broadway.
• Church Street in front of City Hall (near the Elm Street bus stop).
• Elm Street in the New Haven Parking Authority lot.
• Church and George streets next to Gateway Community College.
• 276 Winchester Ave. (near the Winchester Lofts and Yale’s Science Park).
• 60 Canal St. (near Scantlebury Park).
• 255 Blatchley Ave. (near Christopher Columbus Academy).
• 560 Chapel St. at DePalma Court (in Wooster Square).
• 370 Congress Ave. (near the Yale School of Medicine).
The program will have four different pricing tiers. Subscribers can purchase a single 45-minute ride for $1.75; a daily pass that allows for an unlimited number of 45-minute rides in 24 hours for $8; a monthly pass that allows for an unlimited number of 45-minute rides in a month for $20; and an annual pass that allows for an unlimited number of 45-minute riders in a year for $90.
Subscribers will be charged $2 for every additional 45 minutes that they hold onto the bike.
Interested cyclists can participate in the program by downloading the Bike New Haven app and registering a new account. The app contains information about nearby stations, and uses the phone’s camera feature to scan and unlock bikes at designated stations.
Pinto noted that the bikes are painted bright green and blue to match the color scheme of the city parks department.
“So you just grab a bike,” Pinto told the group. “Go Downtown, or go to the market, or run some errands. You drop it off, then pick up another one, and come back home.”
The official website for Bike New Haven is http://bikenewhavenct.com/. Bike New Haven plans to have its soft launch at the Audubon St. bike station on Tuesday, Feb. 20 at 1:15 p.m.