This week Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren announced the city is looking for businesses or groups to create a public bikeshare system.

Right now the city is looking for a vendor who will own and operate the system without city funding.

A study was done by the Genesee Transportation Council that showed bikesharing would work in both the urban areas and neighboring towns.

Rochester City Engineer Jim McIntosh explained how it works.

“You take it to one bikeshare station to another and if you do that within a certain amount of time, half hour to an hour, you don’t pay an additional fee and if you go beyond that sometimes you pay an hourly rate after that point in time,” said McIntosh. “The goal is to keep the bikes moving.”

The system will likely be implemented in phases, with the first phase focused on the downtown area and surrounding neighborhoods.

The first phase is expected to begin in Spring 2017.