MN Mondays: bike share.

Today on MN Mondays: the beauty of bike share. Nice Ride came to Minneapolis in the summer of 2010; we started using it on a regular basis a year later. The program was a perfect fit for an already-bike friendly city; just last year, Minneapolis was named the best bicycling city in America (we were number 2 in 2012, with Portland, OR taking the number 1 spot)! Playing a major role in cities like Montreal, Washington D.C., Denver, and many European cities, the bike share system in Minneapolis was quickly embraced by downtowners (and near-downtowners), so much so that the program expanded beyond Northeast and Uptown into the St. Paul neighborhoods.

How it works: riders first buy a subscription lasting a day, a month, or a year (there are student discounts on the year-long rate!). The day subscription provides you with a code; you get a key with the longer memberships. Your subscription code (or key) unlocks a bike, and as long as you check-in your bike at any Nice Ride Station within 30 minutes, you don't pay any fees for your trip! You can either leave the bike checked-in and explore a near-by cafe or restaurant, or you just take out another bike, and continue on your way. Super easy!

The distinctive lime-green bikes have really become part of the city life in Minneapolis, and we certainly loved being able to take advantage of them. We used them to get to all sorts of places: to classes and work, to Target Field to watch the Twins play, as part of our workouts along the Mississippi River, to the bars on East Hennepin. We loved the bikes for so many reasons, not to mention the money they saved us on parking anywhere downtown! I knew that Nice Ride was certainly something I was going to miss after our move to Milwaukee.

The other day, though, I was in the car and heard a Radio Milwaukee discussion on expanding bike share in Wisconsin. Madison has a program, called B-cycle, that two Milwaukee residents are working to bring to our new city by 2013 (New York City is also planning on starting its own bike sharing program this March)! I was so excited to hear this! It would be great to have bike share back, I hope the city approves and gets to work installing the docks. There are so many positives to the program: fewer cars on the roads, green transportation, health benefits...plus, it's just so fun to ride a bike! I imagine that it'd be the perfect way to spend an afternoon on the paths along Lake Michigan.

Until MKE brings out its bikes, I'll have to live vicariously through all the nice-riders. So, Minneapolitans (and St. Paul-ites): get out there and explore with Nice Ride! Invite your friends from the suburbs and check out some bikes along the river. It's true what they say: you never forget how to ride your bike!

*Photo credits: livegreentwincities.com, at one of our regular bike stations, and Andrew, from earlier this spring.