Bike-share system expanding in Bay Area, starting in SF

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San Francisco’s small but robust bike-sharing system is getting ready to spread into the Mission, move deeper into South of Market and roll into the Duboce Triangle as the first part of a massive expansion of the regional Bay Area Bike Share program.

After months of meetings and surveys, Motivate, the firm that operates the system for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, on Tuesday announced 72 tentative locations for new bike-sharing stations in San Francisco.

The city is the heart of Bay Area Bike Share, which has 700 bikes in San Francisco, San Jose, Redwood City, Palo Alto and Mountain View. Most of those bikes are in San Francisco, almost entirely in the city’s central core: the Financial District, Union Square and Civic Center.

Under the proposed expansion, six dozen new stations — and about 700 to 1,000 more bikes — will arrive, probably near the end of this year. San Jose will also see an expansion with 13 additional locations and about 150 more bikes. The program will move into the East Bay near the end of the year.

Bay Area Bike Share held dozens of meetings and conducted online surveys to determine where people wanted new stations — automated bike racks with a kiosk where members can pick up or drop off a bike. Under the bike share model, prospective pedalers can purchase annual permits or short-term passes that allow them an unlimited number of 30-minute rides.

Since the program started in the summer of 2013, roughly 10,000 people have held passes, and more than 60,000 have purchased short-term permits. Bay Area Bike Share now has 4,000 active members with annual memberships.

Chris Cassidy, a spokesman for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, said the expansion will help build biking — and support for more and safer bike lanes — in San Francisco.

“Were glad they’re building out and expanding,” he said. “It’s going to allow more people to bike.”

Emily Stapleton, general manager for Bay Area Bike Share, said the expansion in San Francisco focused on moving outward — to neighborhoods with a lot of pedestrian traffic and a short biking distance from existing stations.

“That will lay the foundation for the next step as we move out further from downtown,” she said.

Stapleton said proposed locations for bike stations in Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville will be announced within weeks. All of the proposed bike-station sites were the most popular choices of people who participated in meetings and surveys, she said.

Proposed bike-station sites in San Francisco and San Jose can be viewed online or at public sessions in the two cities. Bay Area Bike Share will gather comments at those meetings as well, Stapleton said, but few changes in the station locations are likely.

The phased expansion of Bay Area Bike Share, which could get a corporate sponsor and change names, is expected to be finished by early 2018 — with more than 7,000 bikes spread around the Bay Area, about 4,500 of them in San Francisco.

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan

Bay Area Bike Share map meetings

Maps showing proposed new locations for Bay Area Bike Share stations will be displayed at the following sites in San Francisco:

Main Library, 100 Larkin St., first floor atrium, March 24 through April 12 during normal library hours.

Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial Library branch, 1 Jose Sarria Court, March 29, 4 to 6 p.m.

Mission Library branch, 300 Bartlett St., March 30, 4 to 6 p.m.

Proposed sites can also be viewed online at www.bayareabikeshare.com/expansion