SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - Utahans are going green with a new program that's seen big success in Washington, D.C., Boulder, Colorado and Madison, Wisconsin. It's a bike share that's sure to change the way people commute.
Even in slacks and dress shoes Salt Lake City's new GREENbikes are easy to ride.
Nick Como with Downtown Alliance explained, "I am so excited not to have to bring my road bike downtown anymore. That I can have this, never have to carry it upstairs in the elevator or ding it in the office or get yelled at for having muddy tires at work."
The GREENbike program is a bike share designed to let commuters hop on and off bikes at different stations around town.
Ben Bolte, Director of GREENbike said, "You can walk up to any of these bike sharing stations anytime you want for a small membership price you can take any of the bikes anytime you want."
The stations are going up now and soon they're will be 10 stations and 100 GREENbikes scattered around downtown. With a yearly membership of $75 you can pick up a bike anytime you want, but not for any amount of time; a GREENbike can only be checked out for 30 minutes.
"We found that if people are keeping bike share bikes longer than 30 minutes they're usually chained up in an office somewhere or tucked away where no one else can use them,” explained Bolte.
If you don't have an annual membership you can pay $5 for 24 hours or $15 for a week. They expect in the first year, the GREENbikes will see 77,000 miles of usage.
"This is just another way to have complete streets, where they're good for walking, biking, mass transit and cars and bike share is just another step in that direction,” said Como.
While the bike stations are going up now, the bike share isn't actually going to be operational till April 8th. For more information log on to: http://www.greenbikeslc.org/