Word is residents will have to wait a little bit longer for the much-anticipated rollout of Bikeshare in Pacific Beach.
“Our goal is to have it up and running at the beaches by the summer,” said Bikeshare spokesman David Silverman.
“We are currently working with the city to finalize a handful of locations before we start installation,” Silverman added.
Silverman said beach areas will be included in the second phase of rollout of the short-term bike rental program, the first phase of which he said “has been going great.”
“We currently have 80 stations operational in the downtown/uptown areas and in little over four weeks have had more than 10,000 rides,” said Silverman, who added station installation has not yet begun in the beach areas.
“We are finalizing the downtown area before we start the second phase to the beaches,” Silverman said. A total of 19 bike stations were originally proposed for PB in DecoBike San Diego’s bike-share program. They are: Turquoise Street and La Jolla Mesa Drive; Turquoise Street and Cass Street; La Jolla Boulevard and Tourmaline Street; Loring Street and Cass Street; Cass Street and Chalcedony Street; Missouri Street and Mission Boulevard; Cass Street and Felspar Street; Garnet Avenue and Ocean Boulevard; Bayard Street and Garnet Avenue; Cass Street and Garnet Avenue; Fanuel Street and Garnet Avenue; Ingraham Street and Garnet Avenue; Garnet Avenue and Kendall Street; Morrell Street and Garnet Avenue; Grand Avenue and Bayard Street; Grand Avenue and Mission Boulevard; Reed Avenue and Oliver Court; Pacific Beach Drive and Mission Boulevard; and Pacific Beach Drive and Olney Street.?
Not all those 19 proposed PB locations were initially acceptable to community planers, however. In July, the Pacific Beach Planning Group (PBPG) unanimously endorsed sending a letter to city officials and DecoBike to ask that the bike-share program not be implemented in PB until issues with some proposed locations were vetted and resolved.
In 2013, DecoBike signed a 10-year contract with the city to create a citywide network of 180 bike-share stations for short-term rentals.
DecoBike stations will be located in communities from Pacific Beach to San Ysidro, providing a robust network that will give the public a viable and environmentally friendly transportation choice. The convenience of being able to rent a bike at one location and drop it off at another encourages bicycling as a mode of travel rather than relying on cars.