By Andrew Donohue
San Diego will join the growing group of urban areas across the country and world with bike-sharing programs by next spring if an ambitious plan by Mayor Jerry Sanders comes to fruition.
And his office wants to put a new twist on it. While city officials say their metropolitan predecessors have had to subsidize their programs or leave them to private investment, the city has a bigger goal: to actually turn it into a money-maker.
On Monday, Sanders will stage a demo at Petco Park from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. to allow people to test different kinds of bikes and for potential vendors to show off how their systems work.
Ahead of that, here’s an explainer of bike-sharing programs and a wider look at the new political momentum driving bike awareness in San Diego.
Here’s how it works: Unmanned stations get set up around the city. Each station hosts a group of bikes. You pay either a membership or a day rate to rent a bike and you can return it to any station across the city.
I wrote about Minneapolis’ program after using it in 2010 and wondered why San Diego didn’t have one. (Maybe the mayor does read VOSD after all.) There, you could pay $5 for a day rental, $30 for a monthly membership or $60 for an annual membership.
It’s one of those rare things that can be equally useful for residents and tourists alike.
The Mayor’s Office doesn’t yet know the precise locations but said they’d be based around downtown, mid-city and the beaches.