ST. GEORGE – A new bike share program is coming to St. George and the public is invited to learn more about it Friday afternoon at Dixie Regional Medical Center’s Health & Performance Center.
Beginning at 2:30 p.m. Friday, city officials and sponsors of the program will be sharing information about the bike share program. The hospital’s Health & Performance Center, where the presentation will be given, is located at 652 S. Medical Center Drive.
The program entails placing various stations throughout the city equipped with up to 10 bikes. People will be able to rent the bikes for various amounts of time via a mobile phone app. Bikes can also be returned to any one of the various stations set around the city.
“We couldn’t be more excited to get the info out about this,” said Marc Mortensen, the support services director for St. George.
Read more: City considers bike-share program for St. George
The program is set up through a bike share company, Zagster. St. George will have around 11 stations, five of which are sponsored by Intermountain Healthcare, Mortensen said.
St. George Mayor Jon Pike, as well as representatives from Select Heath and Dixie Regional Medical Center will be on hand Friday at the Health & Performance Center to share more details about the program and when it will launch.
The bike share program is part of the overall master active transportation plan the city adopted last year. The plan promotes cycling as an alternative mode of transportation while also developing and supporting cycling-centric infrastructure.
Read more: City adopts active transportation plan
Those interested in attending the event at the Health & Performance Center will need to walk west though the building, go down the nearby stairs, out the back door and across a bridge. There will be a bike icon on the west side of the bridge where the event is set to be held.
Event details
- What: Information on the roll out of St. George’s forthcoming bike share program.
- When: 2:30 p.m., Friday, Nov. 16.
- Where: Dixie Regional Medical Center’s Health & Performance Center, 652 S. Medical Center Drive, St. George.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @MoriKessler
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2017, all rights reserved.
So you say 50 bikes at 10 stations that cost $90,000 a year,……so let’s do the math, each station has only 5 bikes at $9,000 a year for the station or $1,800 per bike? What the heck is with that?? You can buy 12 bikes at Walmart for $160 per new bike for that $1,800….x 5 equals 60 new bikes for that same $9,000, and if you hit Walmart with a request for a discount for that many bikes you’d get them for even less….so …*???….so you Marc Mortenson want to compare Salt lake’s stupidy of spending Millions on a Bike program? ……They all need to get fired and so do you for such a stupid idea
Well, leaving a pile of crappy, poorly built bikes just lying around the city would be absolutely useless. That’s probably why smart, insightful people came up with this concept instead.
I’ve use these services in several places-none of which I lived in. Not going to pop in somewhere and buy a bike for the day. The first was in Barcelona and I thought it was absolute genius. I had cheap, easy, well maintained transportation in a place where I certainly didn’t want to spend hundreds renting a car, just to drive in confusing traffic. The app showed me where to get a bike, and even how to get around Barcelona to the places I wanted to go. On rainy days, I used the hop on/ hop off bus. All affordable, all easy to use, and all made the city a very nice place to visit.
While I recognize that the St. George area already has an exceptional network of dedicated bike/walking trails for everyone to use, there are lots of gaps where one must ride in a narrow bike lane, crowded by cars/trucks, to get back to the relative safety of the dedicated network. I use this network regularly for errands and exercise, so I can speak from personal experience.
S.G. has a much better climate for bike sharing, year round, than the Wasatch Front, so let’s see how this program works here.
The Virgin River Trail will be re-connected next week with I-15 bridge construction wrapping up, providing an almost nine mile stretch from Sun River to Washington City Limits.
Most participants in Active Transportation already have their bicycles. All we are asking is that city/county planners figure out how to connect more segments of the existing system. Bicycles with electric motor assists are becoming more common in town, which gets some folks out on the trails who would otherwise just walk, or stay home.
I am not sure how wise an investment this bike share program will be, but good luck!