Eugene is hoping to be the first Oregon city with a bike-share program. The city received a $900-thousand grant last week from the Oregon Transportation Commission to help launch the project.
The grant would help pay for initial start up costs. But Eugene still needs a plan to fund operations. The idea is to initially put bike-share stations downtown, at the University of Oregon and in the Whitaker neighborhood. Reed Dunbar, a transportation planner for the City, says the bikes would be for short trips.
Dunbar: "So we want to be able to augment transit service and create the first-mile, last-mile trip. So when you get off an EmX bus, for example, and if we had a bike station right there, you'd be able to go to a destination outside of the EmX corridor."
Dunbar is hoping the Eugene bike-share program will be on the road by summer 2016, in time for the Olympic Track & Field trials. Seattle recently started a city bike share program. Portland is working on one.
