Keep Pronto Rolling

At Tuesday’s Seattle City Council Sustainability and Transportation Committee meeting, council members agreed that bike share is good thing for the city, but have differing opinions on the process to making bike share better for our city.

Cascade believes the best way to get a world-class bike share system is to keep it rolling until the system is ready to expand in 2017. We have bikes are already on the ground, thousands of customers who now use bike share, sponsors in place and the support of federal and county grants — all of this will be lost if we close bike share and wait to reboot a new system later.

Tell city council that you want to keep bike share rolling at the final Seattle City Council meeting on Monday, March 14. Sign up to testify at the meeting. 

We don’t have to wait for the expansion to make improvements on our current bike share system. The Seattle Department of Transportation can improve ridership by locating select stations to more visible locations near key transit hubs and providing low-income memberships. Building a connected network of protected and safe bike lanes downtown is a key ingredient to increasing ridership for everyone, including people who might use bike share if they felt more comfortable biking downtown.

Seattle has laudable goals surrounding equity and that includes access to public transportation. The city can improve equitable use of bike share through discounted memberships and expansion into low-income neighborhoods. Bike share is a piece of our transportation system, a  public good that enhances access to light rail and rapid ride busses and creates another option for people to navigate the city. Write Seattle City Council and let them know it’s time to keep bike share rolling.

Cascade commends Seattle City Council for working to ensure that our bike share system is sustainable, equitable and accessible. Take a moment today to let them know you want to keep bike share rolling in Seattle.