It’s Time to Bring Bike Sharing to St. Louis

Whenever people talk about cycling, we often think about the casual rides with our family on the weekend or the occasional bike ride to a local park. For some, cycling has become their main means of transportation while for most it’s still the automobile.

During a recent visit to Minneapolis-St. Paul, I got to see bike stations all across the city with identical bikes at each station. It was the Twin Cities new public bike sharing network called Nice Ride. Nice Ride, and Washington D.C’s Capital Bikeshare are two of the first public bike sharing systems in the United States.

These new bike sharing systems allow both citizens and tourists to rent bicycles from a station and go wherever they need to go and return it to another station around the city for a small registration fee and nominal usage charge. As I learn more about these systems, and bike sharing in Europe where it is more popular, it becomes obvious that St. Louis needs a public bike sharing network.