Capital Bikeshare’s phenomenal success demands fast growth. In less than a year, CaBi ridership has increased to nearly 5000 trips per day. To accommodate future growth, the system will expand its network of stations over the next few months.
An immediate goal for CaBi expansion in Arlington is to create a dense network of stations throughout the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor. Traditionally, citizen input about such an expansion takes place at a public meeting – and indeed such a meeting was convened at the County Building on June 27th.
As an alternative to the public meeting, Mobility Lab teamed up with BikeArlington and Capital Bikeshare to create an online tool allowing individuals to participate in the process at their convenience 24/7. Over the course of a three week period, over 200 individuals gave suggestions online for station locations by dropping pins on a map and offering comments to one another’s proposals. Users could share their experience using the tool with friends on Facebook and other social media. Overall, this process offered the public a behind the scenes view of issues confronted by county planners and allowed those planners to receive unfiltered feedback on 63 proposed locations.
“Opening the planning process to receive public input online has definitely enhanced our mission to create the most usable system possible,” says BikeArlington Marketing Manager, Tim Kelley. “We were really pleased with the response!”
Like all Mobility Lab projects, code developed for the online station locater tool is open source and available publicly. Already, the program’s success is prompting Capital Bikeshare to reconfigure the tool for use system-wide in anticipation of yet further expansion. Stay tuned!