By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton will install bike-sharing stations in town to promote transportation alternatives to using a car, even though rental fees and other details still need to be ironed out before the program launches.
Assistant municipal engineer Deanna Stockton said Tuesday that there would be at least three docking stations at still undetermined locations. The idea is to enable people to pick up a bike in one place, use it for some part of the day and then return it to a different location when they are finished.
There is no start date yet, but Ms. Stockton said she would like to see the program begin “the sooner, the better.”
Ms. Stockton said that to pay for the bikes and covered bike shelters, the town received a $196,000 grant from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, a municipal planning organization for parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. On Monday, she shared that information at the Princeton Council meeting — the secret “exciting announcement” that Mayor Liz Lempert earlier in the day would not disclose during her press conference.
Princeton is a designated bike-friendly place, in a town that is planning to create a series of interconnecting bike paths, lanes and other facilities to make it easier to travel on two wheels.
“This all comes together at a perfect time,” said Ms. Stockton said in adding she thinks the town is “ripe” for bike share.
Bike share is expected to be on a membership basis, she said, like what Princeton University does with the 10 rental bikes available at the Princeton Train Station. Members use the bike by going through an app on a mobile device, through a program that the company Zagster manages.
In a related move, the university is planning to add at least two more bike share stations on campus, said Kristin S. Appelget, director of community and regional affairs at the school. The number of bikes and the locations still need to be determined, she said.
The bikes on campus and the ones in town will be interchangeable, so for instance someone could rent a bike at the train station and then drop it off at one of the town locations. In total, including the 10 bikes already at the train station, there will be 50 bikes available among all the planned stations on and off campus, Ms. Stockton said.
