More shared bikes have been parked correctly downtown

Seattle’s bike share program continues to provide communities around the city with a healthy and environmentally friendly way to get around. Our most recent bike share report shows that people took over 750,000 rides in July through September, bringing the total number of trips to over 1.6 million in the first nine months of the year. The number of people using bike share has been as high as one of King County Metro’s top 10 most ridden bus lines!

The latest report also indicates that people are getting better at parking bikes correctly without blocking the sidewalk for people with disabilities. Meanwhile, we’ve been working hard to build 1,250 new bike parking spaces as of late November.

Today, we published our Quarter 3 Bike Share Summary Report, which includes information from July to September of 2019. What does it show? High ridership!

This map shows all the places where people are riding!

Bike parking has improved downtown and in urban villages.

Correctly parked bike next to the 8th Ave Protected Bike Lane

In order to be successful, the bike share program needs to make it easier for everyone to travel safely. A critical part of this has been making sure that bikes are parked correctly and do not create obstacles for people with disabilities.

We’re seeing a positive trend of fewer incorrectly parked bikes. Only 0.1% of the bikes we audited this past quarter violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and 5.3% of bikes were parked in ways which created barriers under a stricter, more comprehensive standard we adopted earlier this year.

While that’s a big improvement from 17% of bikes blocking access in the 2nd quarter, it’s important to keep in mind that these observations came from random audits in different neighborhoods than our previous report. These latest audits included more bikes downtown and in urban villages which tended to have wider sidewalks. So we can’t say whether parking has improved everywhere, but we are hopeful we’re heading in the right direction.

We’ve built 1,250 new bike parking spaces in 2019!

We’ve been working to address the problem of incorrectly parked bikes by building more bike parking spaces, educating people about the right way to park a bike, and holding bike share companies accountable for where their bikes are parked.

At the start of 2019, we announced a plan to build 1,500 more bike parking spaces by the end of the year. At the end of reporting period we had built about 850 spots, and since then we’ve been hard at work building more bike parking bringing our current total to about 1250 spots.

We’ve built most of these bike parking spaces on the street in order to keep more sidewalk space open and accessible.

Bike Parking outside Hale’s Ales

Thank you to everyone who has been careful to park your bikes the right way!

We want to give a huge shout out to every single person who has been making an effort to park their bike correctly so that it doesn’t block the sidewalk for people with disabilities. Thanks for doing your part to make sure everyone can get around safely!

Keep on retweeting this video to help spread the word!

Sal, our Seattle-Squeezin’ Salmon, would like to say a big thank you to everyone who is trying new modes of transportation and switching up how they move around the city. Bike share is more important than ever as we continue through the Seattle Squeeze. Remember, biking is one way you can #FlipYourTrip, commuting car-free just once a week to do something good for yourself, your city, and your planet.

Bike share serves an important function, providing another mobility tool for people in Seattle. We’ll continue to evaluate and improve bike share so that it works for everyone.

Have a question? Please reach out to  bikeshare@seattle.gov.