OAKLAND (KRON) — Residents in an Oakland neighborhood are upset about plans to put a bike-sharing station along their street.

It’s happening in the Rockridge neighborhood. A new Ford GoBike station is scheduled to be installed on Friday.

Across the Bay Area, there are several bike-sharing companies that are letting people rent bikes for a few hours at a time. One of the biggest companies is Ford GoBike.

They are aggressively expanding in Oakland, but neighbors along one quiet street say they were never told this was happening, and they’re worried about what it could mean for their neighborhood.

This coming Friday, Ford GoBike plans to install one of its bike-sharing stations along Shafter Avenue in the Rockridge area.

The new bike rack and payment kiosk will replace two neighborhood parking spaces.

“We are not really sure why it’s going in a residential area,” resident Anna Dair said.

Anna Dair and her family live about two doors down. She says they didn’t know this was going to happen.

She’s not opposed to people riding bikes, but she’s worried about how this project got approved.

“I think in concept the idea is very good,” Dair said. “We have a transportation problem in the Bay Area and bikes are a great solution. The problem we have with this is that we are not sure the proper process was followed.”

Oakland city councilmember Dan Kolb represents the Rockridge area.

He says he has received multiple messages from concerned neighbors, but he also says it appears that while Ford GoBike did follow the rules, when it comes to public outreach, they probably could have done a better job.

A spokesperson for Ford GoBike told KRON4 in a statement Wednesday that “working closely with the Oakland Department of Transportation, we’ve done extensive community outreach about these stations and canvassed these neighborhoods to talk with residents face-to-face about bringing bike share to their community.”

Beyond how the project was approved, Anna and several of her neighbors are also worried that the new racks could have an impact on their quality of life.

“We have an issue with the look and feel of the bike stations and how it might change the character of our neighborhood, and frankly, how it might affect the property value of our home which we worked very hard to obtain,” Dair said.

Now, councilmember Kolb also said Wednesday that once the bike station is built, how long it will be there will depend on many people actually use the bikes.WHAT OTHERS ARE CLICKING ON:

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