CREDITS: .75 CM

ABSTRACT

Join a guided bike tour through Evanston’s Divvy network to explore the real-world boons and banes of expanding and operating bikeshare inside a suburban, lower-density community. Mobility services such as bikeshare can vastly improve quality of life for residents and visitors, but adoption is most successful when adjacent municipalities coordinate an integrated system. While villages and towns often work only up to their borders, our active mobility trips should not have to.  

This tour will have riders bike across E-Town on a route that spins through various types of bike facilities and neighborhood greenways. Through a series of station-based discussions with active transportation practitioners, riders will examine issues of equity, operations, policy, and interagency coordination — all while experiencing the system firsthand.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES 

1. Participants will learn the history of bikeshare in Evanston and how this model evolved since its introduction in 2016. Riders will understand the operational, financial, and equity tradeoffs associated with a system like Divvy to see the honest picture of bikeshare in practice.
2. Participants will learn how bikeshare siting and dedicated bicycling facilities ride hand-in-hand to make a successful active transportation system in a community like Evanston. As more communities build out a connected network of biking facilities, the opportunities to expand bikeshare become more and more feasible to create that borderless bikeshare experience.
3. Participants will evaluate the intricacies of bikeshare station siting and learn to apply careful considerations towards existing land use, public Right-of-Way availability, and effective station design.