NEWS City Council approved a request tonite to enter into two contracts with Pedal Movement, LLC. The contracts provide for the operation and maintenance of the City's Bike Share Program, the GoActiveLB Hub and refurbishing additional bicycles for the city fleet.
The City will be adding 4G controllers to the bicycles with software capable of GPS, trip communication and status data. The idea is to shift to 4G controllers before the 3G controllers become obsolete.
Back in January 2019, City Council authorized a contract with Pedal Movement, for the operation and maintenance of the Program with a cap of about $1.4 Million. The Contract was for a duration of two years with the option to renew for three additional one-year periods.
Later the same year Council expanded the Program by an additional $707,250. The new bicycles were purchased from the City of West Hollywood. After two years of the program, new membership had increased by 32% over the previous year. There were well over 9,000 members city wide.
2019 was also the year, however, that daily bike trips took a nose dive from 0.63 bike trips per day the previous year to 0.4 bike trips per day. The drop in bike rides also impacted the reduction in carbon emissions that year. About 181,000 lbs. of carbon emissions were reduced in 2018 but just over 132,000 lbs. of emissions were reduced in 2019.
Still, the City is hopeful that the bike share program will do some good to reduce green house gases in a City already suffering from Port pollution.
But blue bikes aren't just great for the environment they're also an important weapon against the battle of the bulge. In fact, Long Beach's shared bike program has burned over 25 million calories since the City began tracking the data in 2017.
Where some cities have failed Long Beach is committed to sticking it out. Of course, like most things, ridership has tanked during the pandemic. But the loss of bike share programs in Santa Monica and New Orleans have been opportunities for Long Beach. From both cities we've acquired nearly a thousand additional bikes to add to our cities powder blue arsenal.
The best part is that City staff says Proposition A Metro is covering the tab for the bike share program. Considering the strain already on our general fund that's the best news on two wheels.