Walsh Welcomes Hubway to Dorchester, Roxbury, East Boston

The city plans to open 20 new bike-sharing stations this year.

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Dorchester and Roxbury are welcoming new Hubway stations this week, as the Boston’s bike-sharing program expands outside the city’s core.

This week, Mayor Marty Walsh celebrated new locations for the system’s automated docking stations, and he was there to cut the ribbon at a new station at the Roxbury YMCA yesterday. It’s one of 10 slated to open in the area by the end of the year.

Here are nine of the new stations that are already open, according to the Mayor’s Office, with a tenth to open soon in the Four Corners area:

Columbia Road at Ceylon Street

Hamilton Street at Bowdoin Street

Martin Luther King Boulevard at Washington Street

Mt Pleasant Avenue / Dudley Town Common

Roxbury YMCA

Upham’s Corner MBTA Stop

Walnut Avenue at Crawford Street

Walnut Avenue at Warren Street

Washington Street at Melnea Cass Boulevard

Hubway, for the uninitiated, lets users pick up one of more than 1,600 bikes at any one of its 170 stations for a small fee, then ride it to any other station in Boston, Brookline, Cambridge and Somerville. Frequent Hubway riders can buy passes to use the bikes: $6 a day, $20 a month, or $85 a year. Much cheaper than, say, a LinkPass—or cheap enough to stomach paying to ride the T and take a bike the rest of the way.

Also, through a city program, qualifying low-income residents can get an annual pass for $5, which also comes with a helmet.

You can even buy your friends and family Hubway gift certificates.

“By locating new stations in Roxbury, Dorchester, East Boston and other residential areas, we are offering connections to Boston’s neighborhoods,” said Boston Transportation Commissioner Gina N. Fiandaca, in a statement. “Bike sharing is another form of public transportation, and we look forward to seeing more residents give it a try and take a ride on Hubway.”

The city is also hoping to open 10 stations in East Boston by the fall, after it figures out where to put them.

There is still a lot to be done to make sure everyone benefits from free alternatives to driving or taking complex transit routes to work. As the Boston Globe’s Astead W. Herndon notes in his story today, there are still big gaps in Hubway service around the city at this stage in the program’s history, especially in Mattapan, Roslindale and West Roxbury where other transportation options are already lacking.

Also, something to chew on, as Herndon points out in his kicker about the photo op on Tuesday at the Roxbury YMCA featuring city councilors and City Hall staffers : “The politicians, like Walsh, arrived and departed by car.”

Zing.