Lack of biking infrastructure alsois an obstacle. Some people are still resentful of how Divvy was rolled out, starting in the more affluent parts of the city, Reed said. The most common non-English languages in Chicago are Spanish, Polish, Chinese and Tagalog, according to the U.S. To get around the latter issue, Divvy for Everyone allows first-time members to pay cash - 967 signed up in 2016, and another 1,461 signed up in 2017, city officials said.ĭivvy’s web page is in English, but a caller to customer service can get translators in Spanish, French, Italian or Chinese, according to a representative.
Other problems for low-income residents include language barriers, and not having a bank or credit card account that allows system access, Herr said. The city, which owns the bikes and stations, is looking at other time limits and pricing options, Chicago Department of Transportation spokesman Mike Claffey said. “We’re talking about food deserts, lack of bike infrastructure and everything being further apart.” “Geographically, it’s different,” Reed said. This works fine for people in areas with stores and businesses that are close together, but not as well in neighborhoods where homes and businesses are more spread-out, Reed said. Reed said that among the problems for South and West side riders are the 30-minute time limits imposed on Divvy bike rides. The city’s expansion of Divvy and its “Divvy for Everyone” program were among the factors cited by Bicycling magazine in naming Chicago the top bike city in the country in 2016. Wiedel said attracting South and West side users to Divvy requires “a much slower and more thoughtful process.” He said the city initially sent out bicycling ambassadors to talk to residents about Divvy, and this year Motivate has hired a team of six people to do “intensive outreach” to encourage people to join. There were 3,808,934 trips taken as of Dec. She said the bike share industry might be seeing a change as it moves from station-based to more flexible systems, like dockless bikes, which can be parked and locked anywhere and tend to be cheaper.ĭivvy bikes are getting used more overall, according to city statistics. “You want dense areas, and those are typically business districts,” Herr said. Having bike share available to everyone has always been a challenge, since bike locations that will get a lot of use are not always where low-income people live, said Samantha Herr, executive director of the North American Bike Share Association, an industry group. It also noted that areas with more kids and seniors also see less Divvy ridership. The DePaul study said high unemployment rates reduce ridership because the system’s main function is to serve work commuters. Affluent lake-bordering Lincoln Park, by contrast, has 36 stations that saw 452,727 trips during that time period. In the low-income West Side neighborhood of Austin, for example, there are 14 Divvy stations that saw a total of 1,339 trips from July 1, 2016, through June 30, 2017.
The differences between neighborhoods are stark.
The stations added during the 20 expansions have produced a relatively low number of Divvy trips - accounting for 8.1 percent of trips compared with earlier stations, according to a forthcoming study of Divvy ridership by DePaul University’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development, to be released in January.
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