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A group of Short North Businesses including Tigertree, Sandbox, and Paradise Garage jointly announced today that they’re launching the first ever bikeshare program for Columbus: EveryoneBikes. Ten brand new Africa Bikes will be available as of 5pm today for riders to borrow for errands, tours, exercise and other types of short trips around the city.
Their goal is to soon have fifty bikes available throughout Downtown, the Arena District, and the Short North neighborhoods. The bikes will be on display in front of Tigertree during tomorrow’s Gallery Hop.
The group chose to stock their fleet with Africa Bikes not only because of their ease of use, but also due to their ethical business practices. “For every two bikes sold, one bike is provided to an aide worker in Africa which allows to make a difference not only here Central Ohio, but also around the world.” says David Hunegnaw of Sandbox.
EveryoneBikes also aims to help further the “green” transformation taking place in Columbus by providing an alternative transportation alternative for locals. “This innovative approach to Bikeshare will give residents and visitors an option to use a carbon-neutral mode of transportation to navigate our city” says Josh Quinn, owner of Tigertree.
More information can be found online at EveryoneBikes.org.
This is awesome. Grassroots>top-down approach.
How neat! Cool bikes and good cause. What does it cost?
It’s totally free for the time being. :D Sounds like they will have some sort of advertisement funding setup, so that the service stays free. Or at least that’s the plan for now.
How are the bike’s kept from being stolen? $0 credit card transaction? I wouldn’t think holding your license would work, but maybe.
I know some college campus’ have a bunch of bike’s they paint plain yellow available for anyone to use, and you just leave the bike and someone else that needs it grabs it.
Glad to see this. I heard a bit about this from Meredith while we were working on the Yay Bikes! bike share fleet. They are putting theirs in action for the Gears and Garden tour when the American Community Garden Association is in town.
Basically we are taking a credit card number and drivers license number and you take the bike for up to 2 hours. If you’re not back you’re card gets swiped. All of the stores contact information will be on the bike you take out so of course if you call and say you’ll be a few minutes late we’ll be lenient. As far as theft is concerned; we all understand there is a risk involved like any bike and I hate to say it, but it’s going to happen at some point. I think all of the stores and businesses involved understand what can be gained by pushing your brand out from beyond your storefront. The buy in, from an ad dollars perspective, is so low that if a business looks at it as a marketing expense, I feel pretty strongly that you could buy a bike a month and still come out ahead. We’ll work out some kinks over the next few weeks I am sure, with our initial grouping but as long as we have fun with it I think we’ll grow it pretty quickly.
I know some college campus’ have a bunch of bike’s they paint plain yellow available for anyone to use, and you just leave the bike and someone else that
needswants itgrabssteals it.Seriously though, this is really cool. Just need to get a map up on that website.
My first idea was basically that, get people to donate bikes from garages and basements, spray them a color, even encourage other people to just get the right color and add bikes themselves. Everyone I spoke to told me what a nightmare that would be just to keep the bikes running so I put it on the back-burner until Dave rolled in on one of the bikes he got for Sandbox. He has a bunch of bikes for Sandbox users to go out, grab lunch and run errands on. It just sort of clicked for both of us to have businesses do the same thing, but in a network. A map, and other information is coming; we went from idea to execution in under two weeks so we’re working on everything.
This is fantastic. Kudos to Tigertree, Sandbox, and Paradise Garage for making this happen. I’ll be happy to donate to keep this going and I’ll look forward to hearing more details. Thanks for doing this.
Donations are one option for growth, we’re weighing the pros and cons of doing this through advertising revenue, donations or some combination. I don’t know how Dave (Sandbox) managed to do what he did in the timeframe we had. He had a logo and website designed, if I remember correctly, the afternoon after we came up with the idea. Paradise Garage is putting a ton of time into this with bikes and parts they aren’t making a dime on, so if you want to support someone who is getting this thing off the ground, pay them a visit.
JUST LIKE FRANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What a great idea. Thanks for making this happen.
Very cool idea!
An outstanding idea! Kudos to Tigertree, Sandbox, and Paradise Garage.
I don’t know if there is a list online yet, so the complete list of the first 10 is:
Milk Bar
What The Rock?!
Paradise Garage
Jinny
Sandbox
Vino100
Tigertree
Undone
Segway
Ladybird
Tell your favorite downtown area establishments to get ahold of us if they want to join!
It will be interesting to see if anybody actually uses this.
You should consider including a helmet, and giving a pamphlet with the bike to first time renters on biking etiquette and laws. Most people with their own bikes don’t seem to have ever seen how to properly ride, so I’m guessing people without their own bike would not know either.
NerosNeptune Says: You should consider including a helmet, and giving a pamphlet with the bike to first time renters on biking etiquette and laws.
+1
helmets and pamphlets cost money, not to mention the difficulty in sizing. since this is a free service i would expect potential riders to come prepared and bring their own helmet to lessen the cost burden on the store owners.
I would check with some of the existing cycling groups around town. Some of them may already have printed pamphlets that they more than happy to provide.